


Among The Willows

by 09cityskylights



Series: Wild West Ian and Mickey [2]
Category: Shameless (US), gallavich - Fandom
Genre: 1874, Action & Romance, Alternate Universe, American Frontier, Bounty Hunter, Established Relationship, Falling In Love, Forbidden Love, Historic Gallavich, Less angst more fluff than the first, M/M, Old West, On the Run, Sequel, Wanted Men, also more explicit, cowboy, explicit content, lots of shooting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-01-04 06:56:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 38,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12163776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/09cityskylights/pseuds/09cityskylights
Summary: 1874, The American Frontier‘Mad’ Mick the bounty hunter and cowboy Ian Gallagher are BOTH wanted men now, falling in love and fleeing across the American Frontier from Dodge City together to make their way to both freedom and a new life for themselves in Oregon.Sequel to “Someone To Ride The River With”*Some but not all aspects are historically accurate*





	1. Getting the Hell out of Dodge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully my original readers find this sequel too! This is following Mickey and Ian's journey from the time between chapter 13 and chapter 14 of the prequel, 'Someone to Ride the River With'. A little less drama and angst than the prequel, but still some in good doses :)

Read the prequel ' _Someone To Ride The River With_ ' first, here: <https://archiveofourown.org/works/12036720>

   

 

**1874, Gareth’s Tavern**

**Rock Springs, Wyoming.**

A sly grin crosses the redheaded cowboy’s handsome face as an attractive dark-haired man slides casually onto the worn barstool beside him, signalling the lanky bartender with his tattooed fingers to get him a stiff drink, fast.

Shifting his broad shoulders inside his dark woolen coat, he pulls a half-dime out from his pocket and rolls it onto the counter in payment, drumming his fingers while he waits.

Biting his lower lip in uncontrollable anticipation, Ian’s red eyebrows flicker slightly just from his captivating presence alone, but he refuses to look over initially, instead lowering his voice into a husky and playful tone as the other man receives his drink.

“What’s a bounty hunter like you doing in a place like this?” he murmurs into his half-empty glass, green eyes fixed only on the impressive buffalo skull hanging on the wall across from himself. The hide is affixed not far left from it, and its likely the tavern's owner shot the beast before hanging it as a trophy. 

He hears Mickey hum as he takes a drink of his deadshot whiskey, before swirling his own finger-smudged glass as he responds very tongue-in-cheek, “Well I’m travelling man myself, but I’m surprised to see you here... cowboy”.

Allowing his deprived eyes to finally slide over to the man sitting next to him, Ian feels his canvas trousers stiffen slightly as Mickey lifts his dark head to make eye contact with him. His hard blue gaze meets Ian's own ten-fold, and he presses his captivating tongue to the corner of his mouth as he watches Ian take another drink.

The cowboy's not quite sure why they play these mildly foolish callin' games in almost every saloon or tavern they stop in, but there’s something that excites him wildly about it all the same, the notion of Mickey just being some dark and handsome stranger that's miraculously interested in him back. 

Of course, Mickey's no stranger. He's anything but.

Both wanted men now, they had fled from Dodge City together some near fifteen days earlier on horseback, but their travelling had initially been limited to the safer hours of nightfall when the danger of being recognized as two outlaws was the lowest, which in turn meant they couldn’t travel as fast as would be ideal.

It should have perhaps been more of a jaw-clenching journey for the cowboy and the bounty hunter, both with such steep prices on their heads for the murder of William Hossman, to be moving so slowly across the American Frontier, but the two of them were still reveling in the freedom they felt just from having an opportunity to be in each other’s company without an end in sight.

Wisely though, they never did stay in the small frontier towns or settlements that they occasionally passed through for more than an hour's length, either collecting the supplies they needed or having a rest and a pint or a stiff one before they went on their way again, and they religiously ripped down any ‘WANTED’ posters with either of their likenesses on it, although they were seeing less of those now that they were well out of both Kansas and Colorado.

Ian finishes his harsh glass of bourbon with a satisfied grimace at its burn, and then drops a couple half-dimes down on the counter in payment before briefly muttering beside Mickey’s ear, “If you want another stiff one, meet me outside”.

He sees the goosebumps immediately rise on the pale and smooth skin of Mickey’s neck as his warm breath and provocative words drift over it, and he grins to himself before he goes outside and then turns to wait behind the tavern in the darkness.

Ian leans against the building’s bumpy logged walls, tipping his head back to look up at the bright stars underneath the brim of his Stetson hat as he sighs contentedly to himself. His moment of tranquility is short-lived however, and quickly replaced by something with a much greater sense of urgency. 

He hears Mickey rounding the corner, and then warm and calloused hands are searching his skin a moment later as the bounty hunter wastes no time latching onto his hot neck with his mean mouth.

Ian lets out a wanton groan, feeling Mickey’s strong fingers trailing down his chest as the other man bites and sucks a little bruise into the freckled skin at the base of his throat.

Mickey pulls away to look at him then, his perfect mouth still slightly open as he licks his bottom lip slowly. His heated blue eyes make their mark, “You’re a wanted man, Gallagher” he drawls impatiently. 

“Am I?” Ian answers quickly, before he reaches out to flip Mickey roughly around and push him up against the back of building.

Yanking Mickey’s dark canvas trousers down, he slams his hips up against him before he pauses briefly to kiss the side of Mickey’s smooth neck.

He doesn't get a response, other than a slight shudder from the other man.

Gripping Mickey’s fattening cock in his right hand and giving it a few quick strokes, Ian shifts his hips again to press the tip of his hard dick up against his firm ass, and he can see Mickey close his eyes in anticipation.

“I asked you a question” he mutters, removing his hand from Mickey’s cock to line himself up against his tight hole. He can feel the bodily heat coming off of it, and he shivers slightly from the intensity of his need.

“Yeah...you are. I want you” Mickey groans, trying to push himself back onto it. Ian spits down onto himself before he gives Mickey what he wants and presses the head of his dick inside him, causing the other man to initially hiss in pain.

But as Ian slowly slicks himself with more saliva and continues to push in, the hisses soon turn to low, animal-like moans that force Ian to put quietening hand tightly over Mickey’s mouth, “You’re being too loud” he warns.

Mickey bites his hand in response, and Ian grins, giving it to him harder and faster so they’ll both finish sooner.

There was no slow and drawn out love-making sessions in any of the frontier towns, just rushed and intense fucking that had enough danger involved to make them both even hornier for each other, from the deathly yet still somewhat arousing prospect of getting caught.

A few minutes later, both of them forgetting themselves and while panting and groaning more loudly than is likely wise, they suddenly hear an unfamiliar man’s sharp voice cut through their own, the voice drifting around from the front of the building.

“What’s going on back there?”

“Shit" they both whisper in panic. They quickly come apart, yanking up their trousers, and then without a moment of hesitation, Mickey punches Ian in the face.

In response, Ian swiftly kicks him in the knee to make him double over before he grabs at his strong jaw and then shoves him into the wall even harder than before.

The curious man makes his way around the corner as they continue to  _pretend_  they are having a spat, while simultaneously taking very  _real_  blows, and he just chuckles mildly to himself at the reassuring sight.

“Oh, wondered what that sound was. At first I thought someone was pirooting back here”.

“We look like a couple of Miss Nancy's to you? Nah, this son of a bitch was making eyes at my girl” Mickey spits, before throwing a wicked left hook, and although the pain is splitting for a moment, Ian almost laughs at the ridiculous comment before he viciously headbutts him back.

The two of them tousle each other down into the dirt, still swearing and throwing punches until the other man leaves, and then they both collapse onto their backs, panting and laughing in relief before their open mouths find each other again.

But as Mickey starts to rut up against his thigh aggressively, almost immediately returning to the same state of mind as before, Ian sheepishly admits, “I... kinda finished while we were rolling in the dirt. Sorry”.

Mickey initially pulls back to look at him in disbelief, but then his face splits into a look of hilarity as he feels for the wet spot in Ian’s trousers as proof, “Jesus Gallagher” he chuckles, “Well... probably for the best. We need to get fucking going anyways”.

He offers Ian a helpful hand to pull him to his feet, the two of them brushing the clinging dirt off of themselves and grinning as they head back to their waiting horses.

Ian notices with some satisfaction the slight grimace on Mickey’s face as he pulls himself up onto Diablo’s back, but makes a quick mental note to go easier on his ass if they are going to be hitting the road right after again regardless.

After a quick nod to each other from underneath their wide-brimmed hats in wordless agreeance, they both dig their heels into their horses and then take off down the dirt road again, pushing their horses into a steadier trot as they go on.

They ride about an hour or two away from Rock Springs, and then travel a fair distance off the main road they had initially been following to take a rest somewhere where they likely won’t be discovered by any other travelers while they are sleeping.

For the most part, Ian has just been following Mickey’s gut instincts on how to travel as wanted men. After hunting dodgy outlaws so efficiently for the past several years, Mickey knew what exactly would get them caught if they weren’t careful, and when it was more necessary, or worthwhile, to take risks.

He had a natural affinity for potentially dangerous situations, and often times when Ian himself felt completely relaxed, Mickey would suddenly force them off the road and into hiding behind some brush or trees, and sure enough, a group of outlaws or travelers would come down that very road just minutes later.

His impressive intuition kept them safe, and Ian’s never-ending sense of wonder and humor even in the darkest face of danger kept Mickey from worrying too much.

They were perfect for each other.

Settling down onto the hard and earthen ground as Mickey walks off to take a piss in a nearby bush, Ian initially frowns at the feeling of the uncomfortable surface against his head, but then looks up at Mickey hopefully as he returns.

He manages to ask the bounty hunter dead seriously, “You wanna maybe sleep on your stomach tonight?”

Mickey frowns, “Why the fuck would I do that?”

He always preferred to sleep on his back, with his Stetson hat covering his face to block some sunlight out in the morning, and his only exceptions to that are the times when he passes out while still in some sort of embrace with Ian.

Ian can’t keep the playful grin off his face as he answers.

“So I can use your fine ass as a pillow”.

Mickey looks like he wants to be annoyed, but his mouth keeps twitching in an obvious attempt to hide a budding smile as he answers quite clearly, “Fuck off”.

“Come here” Ian motions for the other man to join him anyways, and Mickey of course does, shifting his back into the dirt in an attempt to get more comfortable before they drift off beside each other.

But underneath the Wyoming night sky, with the air so impossibly crisp and the stars so incredibly bright, it’s hard for Ian to find sleep. “Mick?” he whispers after a while, when he can no longer ignore the heavy thoughts plaguing his restless mind.

“Mm?” Mickey answers, turning his head to look at him. Ian tries to hold his gaze, but finds himself looking away before he asks quietly, “Do you…ever regret your decision?”

Mickey is quiet for a moment, and Ian clarifies before he has a chance to say anything, “To let me go. To come with me… and become an outlaw”.

The other man had never done or said anything to suggest he had, but Ian often felt a tinge of guilt for what he had inadvertently done to Mickey’s life regardless. Leaving home and in turn everything he had ever known had been difficult enough for him, and he had absolutely no choice in the matter, if he wanted to live. Mickey did have that choice, and he chose Ian over his own freedom.

As the weeks had passed since their departure from Dodge City, Ian felt more and more that he wouldn’t be able to make this journey on his own, without him by his side, but he sometimes worried that Mickey would eventually regret that decision.

Even in the darkness, he can feel the intensity of Mickey’s eyes as they land on him.

“Never Gallagher. Not once”.

His reassuring promise, and then the feeling of his warm hand reaching over to stroke Ian’s own, finally bring him the peace of mind he had been searching for, and the two of them drift into a comfortable sleep together underneath the endless Wyoming sky. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Old Western Slang:  
> Among the Willows= dodging the law  
> callin'= courting (flirting)  
> pirooting= having sex  
> miss nancy's= homosexuals/ girly men


	2. Mad Mick's Rules For Survival

**Bear River,**

**Wyoming**

****

With his canvas trousers rolled halfway up his hairy legs, Ian splashes around in the knee-height river, cussing in frustration every time he thinks he has a fish between his hands and yet somehow, it still manages to swim away, baffling him.

Mickey meanwhile leans back against a large boulder easily and watches him fish while he enjoys a precious cigar, smoke curling out from his pink lips as he grins at the cowboy’s ridiculous attempts to catch them something fresh to eat for breakfast.

“Use your hat” he says playfully, while clenching his teeth down around his cigar.

Ian turns in the gentle river to give him a look of absolute exasperation, but then with a resigned sigh of “ _fuck it_ ”, takes off his Stetson and tries to glide it through the water to trap them a trout.

Of course, with the hat being well oiled and thus rather water resistant, any damn fish he does actually manage to “catch” flops right back out of it before he can lift the hat enough to toss his catch onto the riverbank.

“You know, you could help” he eventually grumbles over his shoulder in annoyance, and after Mickey finishes his cigar and taps it into the dirt, he walks up to the river bank, watching the fish swimming around Ian’s legs closely.

He frowns with intense concentration as his blue eyes follow their sharp and seemingly random movements in the river, until Ian gives him a strange look.

“You gonna will them out of the water Mick? Use your hat or a sharp stick or something, Jesus”.

Ignoring his impatient statement, Mickey simply presses his tongue between his lips as he pulls out his Colt and closes one eye, and then without another word, fires a shot down into the river.

“Now you’re just wasting bullets” Ian complains, but Mickey raises an eyebrow at him, tipping his head back to Ian’s feet. When the cowboy looks down again, he sees a dead trout floating upwards towards the surface, a significant chunk of it missing from where the bullet had struck its side.

“Holy crap!” Ian exclaims, grabbing it in amazement and clambering out of the river towards Mickey. “How the fuck did you do that?” he then demands, wondering why on earth he wasted the past thirty minutes trying to catch a fish with his hands when the man he was traveling with could do it in two.

“A bounty hunter never gives away his secrets” Mickey says mysteriously, then laughing wildly as Ian rolls his eyes and flings the fish at him before tackling him down to the grass for a playful wrestle.

**Black Rock,**

**Utah**

“We really have to get you a gun Gallagher” Mickey pants, wiping his arm across his dirty and sweaty forehead as he does.

Ian grimaces as he wipes some lukewarm blood spatter off his face before nodding vigorously in sober agreement.

They had been driven off the winding road they were following for the past two days by a group of aggressive bandits, and then chased Southwards at full gallop for a good hour or so before guns were drawn, changing their course of direction rather significantly.

The cowboy and the bounty hunter had skilfully managed to outride a few of their pursuers before it came to a draw of weapons, but some of the men had persisted in following them to the very end, and Mickey didn’t much like running like “some damn coward”.

It went against all of his natural instincts to flee, as  _he_  had always been the one hunting down crafty men in the past, but even he had to accept that the odds of five rifles or pistols to his one Colt revolver was not entirely ideal.

When they were down to just two angry dogs on their heels, Mickey had leapt off of Diablo’s back agilely, and then tucked and rolled in the dust before he entered into an intense shoot out with their closest pursuer.

But while he was tied up in that debacle the other damn bandit had reached Ian, who couldn’t bring himself to just run like some coward and leave Mickey there with two other men to fight on his own.

Before he could decide how to best help without a gun however, the second filthy outlaw had wrangled a distracted Ian down from his horse, and into the dust, gnashing his yellowed teeth above him in a nasty grin as the two of them struggled violently in the red dirt for the upper hand.

Without any real weapon of his own, Ian had quickly ended up with a thick arm gripped tightly across his pulsing throat, while he tried uselessly to throw the other larger man off. But then a gun was pressed firmly against the side of his head, effectively making him into a bargaining chip, and Ian stopped struggling.

Once he finished killing off his own sharp-shooting bandit, Mickey had turned around panting and then quickly taken in the hostage situation with a disappointed sigh, “Jesus Gallagher”.

Without waiting to hear what the crook was going to try and barter Ian’s life for, he lifted his Colt .45 and shot the man holding him clean in the forehead, spraying Ian in the process with blood and brain material.

It was a less than pleasant sensation to say the least, and Ian was rather proud of himself for not vomiting.

“The thing is though…” he starts to admit to Mickey a while later as they sift through the two dead men’s pockets for any loose money or supplies they could possibly use before abandoning the corpses, “I don’t know how to use one”.

The bounty hunter looks over at him in disbelief while turning over and inspecting one of the dead men’s Winchester rifles in his hands, “You’re fucking kidding me”.

Ian shrugs defensively at his tone of disbelief, eyeing the empty chamber of the pistol that had been held to his skull, effectively making it useless to them. No wonder the guy didn’t shoot, he didn’t have any bullets left in the damn thing.

“I worked with cattle Mickey. We only ever had one old Mississippi rifle, and Carl was the one always carrying it in case the herd was attacked or something…which was pretty damn rare” he explains, “And anyways, you can teach me”.

Mickey closes his blue eyes for a moment and sighs, “Yeah, guess I probably should've figured that if you weren’t packing iron when I first nabbed you in El Paso, you probably didn’t have one at all. Because what wanted man would be fucking addleheaded enough to travel without a gun. Unless they didn’t have one, of course” he adds quickly, noticing Ian raise an unimpressed eyebrow at him.

“Mmm” Ian agrees, and as their horses, seeing the coast is now well and clear, slowly return to their masters of their own accord, he asks again.

“So, you gonna fucking teach me or what?”

The bounty hunter shrugs thoughtfully as he reaches out for Diablo's reigns, giving his sweaty horse an affectionate pat on the nose when he reaches his side.

“Well that pistol is useless, and we can’t be carrying rifles into towns, just asking to get dragged into the sheriff’s office. We’ll have to buy you one in the next town…or wait until we have another meat bag to search...but yeah, I'll teach you. You'll be a gunslinger before you know it Gallagher" he teases, with a playful wink.

**New Landing,**

**Utah**

Ian hangs back a bit as Mickey raises his dark eyebrows challengingly at the man across from them.

“I already told you” the store owner repeats in annoyance, “We don’t have any more Peacemakers left in that model. They sell fast, and I don’t have another order for at least a month”.

Mickey had placed his own cherished gun on the counter to show the man exactly what he wanted for Ian, and he didn’t appreciate hearing this news too much.

“Well what do you fucking have then?” he snaps.

Summoned over by Mickey’s impatiently waving hand, Ian approaches to watch as the man lifts a board up from underneath his counter with several models of handguns resting on it.

“What do you think cowboy?” Mickey mutters, running his fingers over one of them. Ian initially shrugs, but then points at one of the smaller models, thinking it will be the easiest to hide in his pocket or belt, “That one looks fine”.

The bounty hunter snorts his obvious disapproval at Ian’s suggestion, “A Deringer pistol? That’s what my fucking sister uses. How about this one?”

He lifts one of the revolvers up for Ian’s consideration instead, testing its weight in his hand and appearing satisfied. Not wanting to admit that he has no idea what to look for, Ian shrugs offhandedly again, “Looks alright”.

“That’s the Smith & Wesson Model 3, it’s a .44 caliber six shooter” the shop owner informs them, “Also a very good choice. Seventeen dollars even”.

Mickey shakes his head vehemently, “Do I look like a fuckin yack to you? I paid that much for my Colt, we’ll give you fucking thirteen”.

“Mick…” Ian warns in a low voice, but then he almost fucking kicks himself for saying Mickey’s name out loud. The shop keeper looks up at them suddenly as if he is thinking hard, but doesn’t say anything, his curious eyes instead drifting in the direction of Mickey’s hands.

Mickey's strict rules for not getting recognized or caught?

_1) Always keep your damn hat on. Your flaming red hair makes everyone look at you, cowboy. Same with my tattoos, I’ll hide em._

_2) If we see another bounty hunter in a saloon, we cut and run before he even looks up from his damn glass._

_3) We don't stop in any towns either of us (namely me) has ever been in before, and we don’t stay in any new ones for more than an hour._

_4) **Don't ever say either of our names in public, especially mine. Ain't too many fuckers named Mickey in the West.**_

With an ill-disguised frown at Ian's slip-up, Mickey quickly yanks some crumpled money out of his pocket and tosses it on the counter, and then, avoiding showing his hands long enough for the man to read his purposely dirt smudged tattoos, he grabs the gun and jams it in his coat pocket.

“Bullets too”.

**-**

“Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon?” Ian asks, fiddling with Mickey’s bowie knife. He runs his fingers down over the _Mick_ carved into the handle.

“Huh?”

Mickey prods at the fire distractedly to liven it up a bit before they lie down for the night together, while Ian watches him, leaning comfortably up against a tree a few feet away.

It had been a close call earlier that day in the firearms shop, but luckily for them the old shopkeeper didn’t seem suspicious or certain enough to raise the alarm about the two strangers passing through town, and now Ian’s mind is elsewhere.

“The Grand Canyon, have you ever seen it?” he repeats earnestly.

The bounty hunter nods, wrinkling his narrow nose a bit like he's trying not to sneeze as he turns to look at him, his face flickering in the firelight. “Couple times, yeah. Why?”

“I’d very much like to see it”.

Ian had heard of the Grand Canyon often from his older brother Lip, who had a unique fascination for learning about the world. An immensely deep and cavernous natural gorge cut out by the Colorado River in Arizona, Lip had said the Grand Canyon was one of the most stunning sights a man could see in the West.

Ever since he was a little boy, Ian had dreamed of seeing it one day, but he’d never had the opportunity before, and reckoned he never would.

Until now. They’d been driven off track, and were closer to Arizona again.

Mickey frowns as he slaps a stray spark from the fire from his arm, “Kind of out of our way Gallagher… we should keep heading West, not further South”.

“Oh…okay” Ian nods slowly, trying to hide how disappointed he is.

He knows he’ll likely never get another chance to see it, but he can’t exactly go off on his own accord either. Mickey sets the pace for their journey, and it's worked out well for them so far.

Mickey’s broad shoulders slump slightly with guilt as he looks at him, reading his disappointed expression very clearly.

“It’s just a glorified gully, Ian. Kinda fun to take a piss in, but that’s about it” he says gently, clearly trying to make him feel better about never seeing it.

Ian nods but doesn’t say anything else, instead just biting his lip as he stares at the fire, but he does shift over to let Mickey lie down beside him, and he puts an arm over the other man to hold him close as they settle in against each other’s bodies for the night.

They lay there quietly for a while, and then Mickey clears his throat.

“Fuck it… I guess we could take a couple days to go down that way”.

Ian nuzzles into the back of his neck happily, breathing in his familiar scent. Wild and warm, like Mickey himself. “Thank you” he says against his ear softly.

He can tell Mickey is smiling and likely glad he gave in, even as he attempts to sound gruff with a “Yeah, yeah”, because he pushes back a bit against Ian to be held even more tightly.

Ian figures that's his unspoken price for the change of plans, and well, he's more than happy to oblige.

 

-

 

(In case anyone was ever curious what Diablo-Mickey's horse- looked like, this is how I always pictured him)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wild and warm, like Mickey himself <3


	3. A Changing Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it's short but I'll add the next chapter soon :) its just a stand alone moment for Mickey and deserved its own chapter.

**Grand Canyon,**

**Arizona**

Mickey waits until the timing is just right to inform him, “Just up ahead. Another hour and we’ll be at the edge Gallagher”.

He’s rather calm and complacent about the whole thing himself, but there’s no denying the excitement that comes over Ian’s innocent face as his green eyes shoot up ahead of them, hoping to see a sign of the Canyon in the distance.

Of course, from the direction they are riding, the landscape still just looks rather rocky and flat, and there’s no way of seeing the place where the world appears to end for a moment.

But Ian trusts Mickey to get him there, and that much is clear as they ride on.

As the hour passes and they near the edge, Ian’s heart beats even faster in his chest, with an unbelievable draw to this place he’s never even been. And when they are close enough to see where the red rock ends and the emptiness begins, an incredible sense of freedom comes over him, and he decides to run the rest of the way.

Mickey watches through soft blue eyes as Ian jumps down lithely from his horse’s back to jog the rest of the way to the Canyon’s ridged and rocky edge on foot.

Like a wonder-struck child meeting the world for the very first time, as soon as he reaches the Canyon’s limit, he stops and throws his arms out wide, as if he wants to embrace the incredible scene in front of himself.

Mickey wonders briefly why he never felt like that about it himself. Why he didn't see it the way the other man did. 

“Come here Mickey! Come here, you _have_ to see this!” Ian calls out, his pure voice loud and echoing across the emptiness, “It’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever fucking seen!”

When he turns to look at Mickey in intense enthusiasm to make sure he is indeed coming, his boyishly freckled cheeks are flushed with pleasure, and he smiles at him like he’s never been happier.

Sliding down from Diablo’s back and leaving his horse to wait with Ian’s, Mickey walks over towards him very slowly, but his eyes never once edge towards the drop of the Grand Canyon. No, they stay in one place.

While Ian exclaims and walks a safe distance along the Canyon’s cracked edge, pointing out every single thing he sees with absolute wonder, Mickey regards him with a very similar expression on his face.

Everything, from his red lashes tipped golden from the sunlight, to his emerald green eyes practically bursting with life, to the pure excitement in his voice, has Mickey’s heart throbbing inside his chest.

Its an almost… painful experience, and although he doesn’t quite understand it, he just knows he can never lose the human being in front of him. Never let him hurt. Never let his unique lust for life and all it offers to fade.

Eventually, he sits along the Canyon’s edge with Ian slowly and carefully, chucking small rocks into the massive expanse below him as Ian rests beside him, filling his pure soul with the sight of the Grand Canyon.

The last time Mickey was here, although he would never admit to it, he was almost afraid of the Canyon. He had arrived a broken man at the age of sixteen, alone and struggling to accept himself.

Looking down into the cavernous gorge back then, he felt as though it threatened to swallow him whole, and he felt an almost sick need to jump into it. Let the canyon take him and his emptiness. But instead he walked on, and he became one of the West’s best bounty hunters, all on his own.

Now sitting peacefully beside Ian... he starts to see the Canyon through the other man’s eyes.

He stops throwing rocks and sits still instead, blue eyes gazing across the gorge and drinking in every detail they can, soothing his weighted heart. And then he feels a warm hand reaching over to hold his own, and he looks over as Ian strokes the back of his hand with his thumb.

“Thank you for bringing me here” he says sincerely, “I know it wasn’t part of your plan Mick”.

Mickey bites his lip, lowering his gaze for a moment as he looks back out across the expanse in front of them again.

_None of this was part of his plan_. And that’s why it was so goddamn wonderful.

“I’m glad you asked me to take you. I take back what I said about it being a glorified gully. It’s…its pretty fucking incredible” he admits.

His belief in that is only solidified when Ian leans forward to kiss him then, Mickey’s heart fluttering so hard inside his chest as the other man’s lips meet his own, that it feels like a bird is trying to escape. The cowboy was working his way into his guarded heart and soul much the same way the Canyon was, slowly and then all at fucking once, in a way that had him feeling breathless and exhilarated, yet slightly terrified at the same time.

He’d wandered alone almost his entire life, and it had never really bothered him before, because there was never anything that made him feel he wanted, or could ever even have, anything else.

But then Ian Gallagher came along….and he had changed absolutely everything the bounty hunter ever thought he knew about himself.

 

-Song for this chapter would be 'Wait'- M83 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltGyh4vjmQA>


	4. Gallagher The Gun-Slinger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes it's hard finding good gifs/pics for this fic but I tried. It's a close up so I think it works ;) I'll keep trying to include them, I got some feedback that you guys like having them in the story :)
> 
> Old Western Slang:  
> pot-shot= easy shot

**Jacob Lake,**

**Arizona**

“Stand still” Mickey reminds Ian firmly as he stands there like some kind of a damn scarecrow in front of a slender tree, arms and legs spread out carefully from his body.

Exactly as the bounty hunter had directed him to, in one hand he holds his own ' _wanted_ ' poster, in the other, Mickey’s.

As soon as he obliges, Mickey licks his bottom lip and closes his right eye tightly, and he looks so incredibly attractive standing there with his Colt .45 out, that for a moment Ian almost forgets he’s aiming iron at him.

In a one, two, three, motion the bounty hunter fires three clean shots in Ian's direction, one at each poster, and then one unexpectedly between the legs.

“Jesus Christ Mickey!” Ian swears, his knees practically shaking from shock as he whips around to see where the bullet had gone once Mickey lowers his gun.

A good inch below where the crotch of his trousers had ended, is a bullet lodged cleanly in the tree he had been standing in front of, and he grabs at his crotch protectively in case Mickey suddenly decides to start fucking shooting at him again. 

But Mickey just grins, pretending to blow off the tip of his gun as he arches an eyebrow at him, and Ian is torn between being annoyed and being turned on.

“Blow off my dick and I guarantee you’ll bellyache about it more than I will" he ends up grumbling, but Mickey just laughs, his handsome face lighting up with it, “Wouldn’t have aimed there if I couldn’t hit my mark. I want you to trust me Gallagher. Look at the papers”.

Ian had completely forgotten about the wanted posters still gripped tightly in each hand, and when he lifts his hands to look at them, his mouth almost drops open in incredulity.

Both of their sketches have a clean hole right through where their heads used to be.

He’s insanely impressed, but Mickey doesn’t even seem surprised by the accuracy of his shots. Then again, Ian muses, he’d been marked as one of the best bounty hunters in the West for a reason.

Mickey beckons him over with his hand, “When I’m done with you, you’ll be at least half as good as that. C’mere Gallagher, time to make you into a real gunslinger”.

Ian approaches Mickey warily at first, but the other man just gently turns him around and then makes him step back a few paces for his own shooting practice. “Okay, okay. Stop. You’re gonna shoot from here. Gonna start you out just aiming for the tree. Anywhere on it”.

Holding his new Smith & Wesson awkwardly in one hand, Ian feels Mickey shift to stand directly behind him, reaching out and around him to move his arm into the proper position while his body is pressed against his own.

“Hand here, yeah, finger there. Good. Pull the hammer down when you're ready, and then shoot”.

Mickey steps back to watch.

Following his exact direction, Ian frowns in disappointment as the bullet comes flying out but misses the tree entirely, going way too far to the right.

“What the fuck! I was aiming right for it!” he complains.

Mickey just chuckles, “Guns ain’t all that accurate Gallagher, why do you think I started you out with such a pot-shot? Here, use both hands if you want to start, it steadies the gun a lot”.

Even with both hands tightly gripping the Smith & Wesson, Ian’s second shot barely grazes the bark at the very edge of tree, and he sighs with frustration, and a little embarrassment.

“Here” Mickey just presses himself up behind him again, reaching his arms around to hold Ian’s in the proper position, but this time, he doesn't let go.

Ian swallows hard as he looks down at the warm and rough fingers resting over his own, feeling his heart start to beat faster in his chest. More and more, the other man had this effect on him, indescribable as it was, it was like falling…but in a curiously pleasant way.

Mickey then presses his finger against Ian’s, squeezing the trigger and releasing a bullet that hits the tree smack in the middle of it’s trunk.

Ian’s heart soars in his chest for a moment with absolute pride, and he can almost feel Mickey’s smile from behind him, but then again, he starts to feel something else too.

“You a little excited back there?”

He feels Mickey’s lips press against the back of his neck, trailing down it’s length in slow, proud kisses. “You tell me, cowboy”.

Rolling his neck slightly at the feathering touch, Ian feels Mickey slide the gun down into his pocket before he wraps his arms back around Ian’s middle, holding him close for a moment before Ian turns impatiently in his arms.

Reaching out to hold the sides of Mickey’s face, the bounty hunter’s stubbled cheeks graze across Ian’s fingertips as he moves in to make their lips meet, Ian closing his eyes tightly and opening his mouth further to press his tongue in against Mickey’s as he unbuttons and writhes out of shirt. 

Reckless and longing, all thoughts of gun practice fade as the two of them start to kiss harder, breathing heavily from their nostrils as their lips refuse to part.

Ian reaches out to slowly unbutton Mickey’s cotton shirt, the other man dropping his arms to his sides with a needy pant to let him roll the shirt down and out of the way as Ian pulls his mouth away from his lips to kiss down his chest instead, slowing their pace.

The planes of Mickey’s chest are smooth and warm, yet firm beneath his lips, and Ian kisses each place he stops at affectionately, until he reaches Mickey’s branding scar. He pauses, unsure of what to do.

_In the light of day, Ian can see it’s actually raised scar tissue, a circle roughly the size of a man’s palm, with an engraved M in the middle of it…a symbol of ownership._

_He swallows hard at the ugly sight of it. He has no doubt in his mind that Mickey’s barbaric father had been the one to brand him with a cattle iron after what Mandy told him the night before, and he can’t imagine how fucking painful that must have been._

_Mickey glances down at what he’s looking at, and then turns his head away in mild disgust, “Pretty huh?”_

Ian’s chest feels heavy at the memory of the story, and he slowly kisses the scarred and circled  _M_  for Milkovich especially gently, hearing a sharp intake of breath from Mickey as he does.

Not from pain, the sensation had long since been dulled... but from hesitance to trust. In all of Mickey’s life, he had never been more driven to hide a piece of himself from becoming part of something intimate, because of how much he hated it.

He was burned and branded like a piece of property, nothing more and nothing less, for the rest of his life. How could Ian look at that and not see him that way?

But he doesn't. Ian catches and holds his worried gaze with sincere green eyes, wordlessly demonstrating his feelings and respect for him as he then continues his intimate journey with pressed lips down past his navel, feeling Mickey’s stomach draw in sharply as he kisses near his belt line.

Mickey still hesitates though, so Ian undoes his belt for him, lowering and then lifting to take his manhood into his mouth without using his hands.

And just like that, Mickey feels like a man again. And like someone worth wanting.

His eyes squeeze shut, pinks lips parting slightly in wonder as Ian slowly moves his mouth up and down his impressive length, reveling in the way Mickey’s thighs shake every time he pauses to press the tip of his tongue against his head.

Letting some saliva dribble down from his mouth onto his fingers after a while, he slowly rests one wet finger up against Mickey’s ass. Taking the other man’s shifting legs as an invitation, Ian presses a long finger inside his warm body, almost shivering from his own impatience to feel it around his cock instead.

“C’mere cowboy” Mickey says above him after a while, with his voice low and unsteady, and like one magnet drawn to another Ian rises to let the other man quickly undress him before the two of them lay down onto Mickey’s hastily spread out coat.

Mickey turns away from his kisses to face downwards like he usually does, but with one hand on his hip, Ian hesitates.

 “What are you waiting for Gallagher?” Mickey hums impatiently.

“I…want to see your face this time” Ian admits. One way or another, the other man almost always managed to turn away from him when they were being intimate in this way. Ian remembers the days when he was younger and he did the same, when he was trying to pretend he wasn’t doing what everyone else said was wrong. If he didn’t look, or closed his eyes when he was with another man, it was easier to be in denial.

But with Mickey, he knew it wasn’t wrong. He wanted to look him in the eyes, see exactly who he was with. 

And he was willing to wager Mickey felt the same way.

There’s a moment of silence where Mickey just seems to go very still, and Ian worries for a moment that he’s angered him. First by hovering over his branding scar, and now this. But then Mickey turns to look at him, and as their eyes lock together with a newfound intensity, Ian hastily realigns himself to adjust to the new position.

Without no word of protest coming from Mickey, he sinks into him almost agonizingly slowly, Mickey’s stomach drawing in harshly and repeatedly as his blue eyes darken and his pupils expand at the sight of him.

Positioned carefully above him, Ian puts one hand underneath his thick leg to help guide his gentle thrusts, but uses the other to simply hold the side of his face, stroking Mickey’s firm and clenched jawline as he enters him.

It’s amazing how a man who once seemed so harsh, so dangerous, can appear so vulnerable beneath him. But he can see how Mickey’s face starts to line with some worry at the intimacy of the position, and he’s starting to close his eyes again, so Ian leans down to kiss him softly, whispering, “I want you to trust me”.

Mickey’s eyes flash open to meet his again, flickering back and forth between his, his dark eyebrows gently rise as he nods.

“...I do Gallagher”.

Every time he closes his eyes from that moment onwards in pleasure, the second he opens them again, he searches for Ian’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always thanks for the comments, subs, kudos and all :) Much appreciated <3


	5. Through The Mill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was written by request, and is largely a flashback to 'Someone to Ride the River With' Chapter 6 when Ian was taken by the outlaws, but covers Mickey's perspective instead. Thank you to Dray for brainstorming with me!! <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *There are flashbacks within flashbacks here, so I hope that doesn't get too confusing. Different text color would help lol. Basically, it starts in their current time, with a separator (-) indicating when Mickey's memory starts and ends. Within that, there's some italicized content indicating earlier points in the story :P
> 
> Old Western Slang:  
> Through The Mill = been through a lot  
> lynched = hung by a rope  
> all-overish = uncomfortable  
> flannel-mouthed liar = smooth talking liar  
> cutting up shines = playing tricks

**Pine Valley,**

**Utah**

Mickey awakens with a start as he feels a solid fist collide with his side and he’s instantly ready to fucking kill someone, but confusion washes over him and his racing heart as he opens his eyes and realizes there is nobody hovering over him, ready to bash his skull in.

It’s because the punch came from Ian, he quickly realizes, who is still laying close beside him and is entirely asleep, but he’s thrashing, and his forehead is screwed up, tears leaking down his cheeks and streaking through the fine layer of dust almost always resting on their skin.

“Ian?” Mickey says, his voice hoarse as he immediately reaches over to grab his arm and shake him awake. Ian’s green eyes shoot open, and even in the dim light of the fire that’s dying down Mickey can see the heavy fear laced in them.

“Mickey” Ian practically whimpers, his shoulders sagging in absolute relief as he looks around and realizes they are together, and everything is okay.

“You have a nightmare?” Mickey asks softly as he prods the fire up again, noticing the sweat soaking through Ian’s cotton shirt. Even though Ian appears to be settling back down already, Mickey is still extremely tense, and fully awake.

“Yeah, bad one” Ian admits, grimacing as he appears to run through the troubling images in his mind once more, “You know that time…when those outlaws came and took me?” he asks reluctantly.

Mickey nods, not fond of the memory himself.

“I dreamt that you never came back for me. They took me in and they lynched me Mickey…I felt my neck snap”. Ian shudders at his admission, reaching out to rub his neck and soothe the phantom pain still lingering there.

Guilt washes over Mickey in a nauseating wave, “Fuck…C’mere”. He taps his broad chest in invitation, Ian eagerly returning to his side to rest close against his heart, like just being near to him was reassuring enough that it was all just a horrific nightmare.

Still, the slumped feeling of the sweaty and shaken man he’s holding close to comfort nudges Mickey to quietly admit, “I never could have left you Ian. Forgotten about you”.

“You were mad at me that day” Ian points out tiredly, “I kept trying to get you to tell me your secret…that’s why you took off, wasn’t it?” He’s not speaking accusingly, rather just running over the events in his mind, but that day clearly meant very different things for each of them.

For Ian, it was confusing, because as much as he knew being in Mickey’s custody still meant death for him, he longed to be back with the other man. Wanted to be rescued by him. And now in hindsight, that all made perfect sense. But it wasn’t like that for the bounty hunter.

Mickey grimaces at the memory, still knowing it was his fault that Ian was ever taken at all that day. He wasn’t mad at Ian when he took off that day, not truly. He was mad because there was already a strange connection between him and the cowboy, and he couldn’t deny that to himself, regardless of how much he tried to.  

“I was mad at myself. Had nothing to do with you, really. Also, I might have heard your stomach grumblin’ back there. Couldn’t let my captive go hungry now could I?”

Ian grins against his chest, shaking his head as he does, Mickey admires the locks of red hair beneath where his chin is resting, “I reckon not”. He lets out a contented yawn, and Mickey can feel him starting to drift off towards sleep again, so he just strokes his shoulder reassuringly to help him get there, murmuring softly, “I’d never let anyone hurt you Gallagher. Never”.

While Ian, always the better sleeper, soon manages to find more pleasant dreams again, Mickey on the other hand is completely alert and awake, because mentally… mentally he is back in that day, the day he really could have lost Ian.

-

“Stupid cowboy” he spits in anger, still feeling a bitter taste in his mouth as he rides off from where he had wordlessly left Ian tied to that tree. _Can spend a few hours talking to himself since he likes it so damn much,_ Mickey thinks in annoyance, still feeling all-overish from the cowboy’s questioning.

He rides fairly far from his and Gallagher’s makeshift campsite as he cools down, initially planning to hunt something down for dinner so he has a clear excuse as to why he would have left in case Ian asks, rather than make it clear he needed time to sort out his feelings.

But soon he finds his mind is entirely too preoccupied for the skilled task, and he ends up perching on a rock, resting his chin the heel of his palm while he mulls over the day before.

Initially, when he said in the saloon that Gallagher ‘was his’ he meant it purely in a captor-captive sense. But as soon as the words left his mouth, smooth as butter, they sounded…like they meant more. And then Ian looked over at him in a way that almost seemed interested as he asked, “So I’m yours now, huh?”

That scene had replayed in Mickey’s mind at least a dozen times already, always causing a dull burn to form in the pit of his belly that made his face feel flushed.

“He’s just a damn fool, doesn’t realize what he sounds like when he talks like that” Mickey says aloud to reassure himself, Diablo lifting his head from the grass he’s nibbling on at the sound of his voice. He clops forward a bit towards him and whickers loudly, tossing his dark tail emphatically as he eyes his master.

Mickey smirks, always feeling his steed understood him more than any person had. “Yeah, yeah. I know he saved your ass. I thanked him for that already”. Diablo snorts against his face and Mickey smiles, “It’s dangerous you know. I trusted one like him before, I’m sure you remembered how well that fucking served me”.

There had been a young man once, a simple thief no where near as charismatic as Ian, that had ended up in Mickey’s clutches and then almost talked his way out of them. Promises of wanting a teenaged Mickey, of finding him attractive, had him forgetting his better senses and untying the man to engage in some more than captor-captive relations.

But he was just a flannel mouthed liar, and the crafty man wouldn’t go through with any of it, simply pulling away and rolling in the dirt with laughter when Mickey leaned in to kiss him, “You _actually_ want to be with a man! What the hell is the matter with you! Mad Mick alright, wait until the boys back home hear about this shit!”

Mickey had paused, giving a blank stare as disappointment sank in his stomach, and then as a nasty fear rose about being outed, he shot the guy right in his cruel and laughing face.

It was surprisingly easy that time. The handful of others over the years had been more subtle, and had simply perhaps noticed Mickey’s glances of interest towards them, but he never trusted any of their words, and if they pushed too much that they thought he wanted ‘comfort’ from a man, he’d kill them.

Ian had been dangerously close to that tonight. To pushing. Yet strangely Mickey felt no urge to kill him, rather the complete opposite, regardless of his empty threats towards the cowboy. Because interest coming from Ian…well it was different somehow.

He didn’t just say things, didn’t seem to be cutting up shines. Mickey knew Ian watched him, sometimes saw the lustful look in his eyes, like he was thinking the same things Mickey was.

It was both unnerving and captivating at the same time, the thought that the other man might actually be interested in him. But how could he know for sure? How could he truly trust it wasn’t just some trick to make Mickey let him go?

Mickey only granted himself the opportunity to truly appreciate the smooth muscles and attractive cuts of the other man’s body, admire his firm looking lips while wondering how they would feel against his, and imagine touching his red hair when Ian was passed out sleeping by the fire at night.

And then sometimes he’d slip away, at times like this, and engage in a little relief with his hand once he was far and away from where the cowboy could ever see or hear him. Fuck it was embarrassing, he hated himself even as he was walking off to do it, but he couldn’t help it.

That time he let Gallagher take a bath in the river had just about done him in. He still doesn’t know what he was thinking letting the other man get naked in front of him. Almost gave himself away right there, barely managed to hide his pitched tent beneath his arm as he snapped for Gallagher to get dressed.

Looking up and around himself, Mickey finally notices the sun is falling fast now, and he figures Gallagher’s probably wondering where the hell he wandered off to, while his stomach likely grumbles ten-fold by now.

Mickey definitely doesn’t trust him, but part of him deep down wants to, and wishes he could…

He rides Diablo leisurely towards his and Ian’s makeshift camp, but as they get closer, even from a fair distance, he frowns. He can see the tree’s outline clearly, but the cowboy was wider than its width, and should have been clear to spot tied against it.

As he gets closer, his heart starts to sink.

His first thought is that Gallagher somehow got away. He managed to get out of the ropes, and he took off…but as Mickey jumps down from Diablo, panting and pacing like an anxious dog to take in the evidence, he quickly realizes his first assumption couldn’t be farther from the truth.

There was a clear struggle here. The high-quality ropes he used to tie Gallagher up with were cut clean though, and there’s hoof prints everywhere, Mickey would guess from three horses. There’s rusty colored blood drying in the earth too... Mickey grimaces at the sight of it, knowing that with the odds of three to one, it’s almost certainly Ian’s.

“Fuck” he hisses aloud, hurrying to get his shit together before he leaps back onto Diablo’s back. The sun is going down fast, and he’s rapidly losing the proper light to track in.

His mind is growing white hot with rage at the thought of the faceless thieves who snatched Ian, and he tries to squint and follow the hoofmarks as far as he can, but it’s almost pointless, especially once the landscape becomes more brush and rock than dirt.

Reluctantly, after an hour or so into his fruitless search for a sign of where the cowboy might have been taken in the darkness, he throws himself down into dust, squeezing his skull tightly between his hands.

“FUCK!” he bellows. Ian could be dead right now, dead or being tortured, and it was entirely his fault for stalking away and leaving him there on his own, unable to even protect himself.

Was he scared right now? Probably, if he’s alive, Mickey thinks miserably as he makes a small fire. Probably blaming Mickey for what had happened, and hating him for just leaving him there, defenseless and alone.

It shocks him, but he feels his throat getting tight, and his eyes almost stinging as he thinks about Ian more and more as the night goes on. Tonight is simply a waiting game for the sun to rise so he can track Ian again, and he runs through memories in his worried mind without realizing he’s doing it at first.

Like how Ian’s voice sounded when he sang, as if he wasn’t being led to the slaughterhouse, it was cheerful and bright. And…he did have a nice voice. It just made Mickey uncomfortable, flushed in the face listening to him sing, because it pulled a feeling from deep inside himself that he didn’t want to face.

_“Alright, alright! Jesus. Shut up! We can pull over here” Mickey grumbles, still shaking his head in disbelief._

_Ian doesn’t care, he’s been told he had a pleasant voice on more than one occasion, but he also knows there’s no chance in hell of the bounty hunter admitting to enjoying his little ballad while they walk through wild country._

_“Your horse liked it” Ian says, as Mickey ties the stallion to a tree in the shade. The bounty hunter rolls his blue eyes as if he’s exasperated, but once again, Ian’s certain there’s a faint smiling hiding on those well-formed lips._

He thinks of Ian’s green eyes, always sliding over to look at him, even when he thought Mickey didn’t notice. And the way he teased him like they were friends, or maybe more.

_While Ian cooks their small breakfast over the crackling fire on a makeshift spit, Mickey gently runs a straight razor down over his cheeks and chin, after procuring a bar of lye soap he uses to make a bit of a lather on his pale skin. Ian watches him with interest as he twists the young rabbit over the fire._

_“You missed a spot”, he says as seriously as he can. Mickey looks over at him with a raised eyebrow as he touches around his handsome face to find said patch of missed stubble, but Ian accidently grins, giving himself away._

He recollects the burning feeling Ian would cause to rise in his gut when he looked at him a certain way, one that made Mickey internally regret the way he had captured Ian with ropes and a gun.

_Mickey licks his lips indifferently, taking another gulp from his dwindling glass. “Don’t matter if they do, cowboy. They won’t mess with anything that’s mine”._

_His blue eyes slide down the length up the bar and then up at Ian, a dark and unreadable expression in them._

_Ian responds as casually as he can. “So, I’m yours now huh?”_

_The bounty hunter turns in his seat, giving him a long and hard stare before he repeats, “Did you not hear me the first time Gallagher?”_

More than anything, even after everything Mickey had done to him, and even after he repeatedly protested his own innocence which Mickey was more and more beginning to believe, he had given up a chance to escape… just to help Mickey save Diablo’s life.

_“You know,” Ian says quietly after a while, “I’ve been on my own for a few months now, no family by my side. I’m sure after a couple of years, a horse like that would mean everything to me”._

Mickey finally lets a strangled noise of pain, one he tries desperately to keep in, but that sneaks out anyways, loud and almost like a defeated moan. He feels insanely alone in the world at this moment, like everything slipped away from him along with Gallagher in the hands of those thieves.

Diablo comes over with a quiet snort, lowering his large head gently down to his master’s hands, Mickey grasps at his solid warmth to try and find some comfort in his presence, because Ian was right, Diablo does mean everything to him.

But something else means something to him too now, that much is obvious. It’s ridiculous, its impossible…but its there, all the same.

As soon as the sun rises, he immediately gets on Diablo again, picking up the trail from yesterday like a furious hound dog. With the brightest sunlight of the day assisting his eyes, the trail is easier to follow, and his heart races more and more as he rides on, wondering how far they could have gotten.

Finally, with relief washing over him, he spies a small group of beings in the distance, three dark horses, three men around a fire, and a forth man tied to a tree.

Ian. He’s still alive. They are keeping him as _their_ captive.

Fire burns angrily in Mickey’s lungs, and he spurs Diablo on faster and harder, his horses’ hooves beating down into the earth viciously as they thunder towards the unsuspecting outlaws that had stolen his…his Ian.

 _“Yah Diablo! Yah!”_ he urges boldly, the only last-minute warning of his approach he will give before he slaughters these crooks.

He barely glances towards Ian, just notices from the corner of his eye the red hair and a head slowly raising to look towards him, before he pulls out his gun and starts shooting. He can’t afford to make a single mistake here, not when its three against one.

It feels like it happens in a blur, shooting, riding in circles, raising dust to assist in breaking down the drunken men’s aims in his direction.

Before the last man falls to join his companions, dead and bleeding in the earth, he tries to plead with Mickey for his sorry life.

 “Take him! Just fuckin take him! Don’t kill me!”

A sense of calm comes over Mickey as he eyes him from atop Diablo, who paces in the dirt, and at the same time a nasty and primal urge joins with the calm to create a cold internal storm. He’s going to enjoy killing this man, this man who took Ian. Who hurt him.

“See, the thing is, I can’t very well do that now, can I? You stole what’s mine. And no one,  _no one,_ fucking steals from Mad Mick and lives to tell about it”.

He snarls the last line before he lifts that Colt .45 to decimate the last outlaw, and then there is a moment of silence, before he spits over Diablo’s side into the dirt, and finally allows himself to really look at Ian.

Part of him feels the urge to rush over to untie him, but he forces himself just to walk, and it feels like it takes ages to reach him. Ian looks absolutely awful.

There’s both blood and vomit stained down his shirt and chin... his green eyes are filled with terrified tears, and there is dried blood crusting at his nostrils, making his breath come out in slow wheezes. The ropes are tied so tightly around him, so unnecessarily cruel, that they are almost cutting off his circulation.

The very second Mickey ungags him the cowboy tries to speak, looking up at him like he’s some sort of hero, and not the bounty hunter who captured him in the first place. Mickey doesn’t understand that, and it makes his chest twist with disgust for a moment. How can he look at him that way?

“Mick…” Ian whispers weakly, trying to find words to express his relief while the bounty hunter works to saw through the harsh ropes cutting off his circulation, “Mickey”.

“Shhh Gallagher” Mickey mutters as the ropes come undone, “This ain’t exactly a rescue” he reminds him reluctantly.

But his blue eyes flicker upwards anyways, and meet Ian’s.

Ian’s desperate fear tinged with a new relief is reflected in his irises, and Mickey swallows hard, holding his heavy gaze as he undoes the final knot. He notices with a thudding heart that Ian is reaching out for him, not in a threatening way, but in a grateful way, reaching out to touch his face.

For a moment, Mickey freezes, knowing he should pull away… but not wanting to. Ian’s cracked lips are slightly parted, and Mickey feels his forehead tense nervously as Ian’s fingers near his cheek, but before he makes it, his hand falls, his eyes roll back weakly and his head starts to tilt.

Mickey’s arm shoots out on a reflex, and he grabs Ian to keep him from falling against the tree’s hard trunk again.

The cowboy is passed out cold, dehydrated, abused and exhausted, and Mickey’s heart feels incredibly heavy as he lifts the taller man up and over his shoulder. Slumping him over Diablo’s back, he leads the horse by the reigns for an hour or two to a safer and more restful place for them to spend the night and recuperate.

Placing Ian gently beside the fire to sleep, Mickey settles on the other side of it, watching him silently, he feels an incredible sense of relief having the redheaded cowboy back in his company, conscious or not.

The memory only just hits him then that Gallagher was worth money, and that’s why he was stolen in the first place…but money hadn’t even crossed Mickey’s mind as he rode after what was _his_.

Shit. 

-

Mickey sighs shakily at the memory of that day, and at the fear he held then. The thought of having any sort of feelings for another man that didn’t just involve getting off, and the knowledge that the one man that made him feel that way was going to die, was almost excruciating then.

If he had any idea he could have this someday…that it would all work out…

The fire crackles warmly beside them, and Mickey holds the cowboy in his arms even closer to his chest, causing the other man to mumble peacefully in his sleep.

Mickey kisses the top of his head tenderly, the soft red waves bending beneath his lips, and whispers softly as he relaxes to sleep again, “You’re mine, Gallagher. And I’m yours”.


	6. Hot, Hot Springs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Old Western Slang:
> 
> airtights- canned goods  
> getting your back up- getting angry

**The Town of Rushwater,**

**Nevada**

As soon as they pass a hammered down wooden post indicating that the small town of Rushwater is only a further half-mile down the dusty earthen road they are following, Ian sighs gratefully.

“Finally, was starting to think we were never going to run into another town” he grins.

Its name is clearly ironic, as there is little water _“rushing”_ or otherwise to be found in this part of Nevada, but they are in sorry need of a resupply and have been for days. Although Mickey has a vague idea of where most of the settlements in the vastly spread out territories of the West are, him and Ian are also travelling further and further from his familiarity as they continue on towards Oregon, and a lot of it is guesswork now.

Mickey deliberates aloud at the sign, “Gonna stock up on some Lone Jack in Rushwater...some bullets. Maybe some airtights”. He looks over in interest, “What about you cowboy? Need anything?”

“Well…I sure wouldn’t say no to a bowl of stew on a handsome man’s dime” Ian grins, laughing as the bounty hunter gives him an unimpressed look. The flirtatious cowboy’s not even bothered, he can clearly see the embarrassed flush creeping up the other man’s pale neck as he focuses very intently on the road ahead of them, and not on being asked to take him to dinner.

Ian would be willing to bet the last bit of bourbon in his canteen that he’ll do it anyways.

As soon as they enter into Rushwater’s insignificant streets however, busy with local folks running errands at this mid point of the day, Mickey visibly tenses, his blue eyes narrowing at some apparent threat that Ian doesn’t see.

“We need to leave. Turn around Gallagher” he immediately mutters, pulling Diablo by the reigns as he goes to do the same.

Ian frowns and doesn’t move, unwilling to give up so easily on going into the quaint little town. He did really want an actual saloon’s meal today, that wasn’t all playing.

“Why on earth-” he starts to ask, but Mickey sharply cuts him off with a low hiss, _“I said now, dammit!”_

Ian reluctantly turns his patient horse around and follows Mickey right back out of the town’s open gates, but he looks back curiously anyways… and catches a glance of what has Mickey’s back up so suddenly.

WANTED posters, everywhere.

On the face of almost every other building in the frontier town, his face and Mickey’s, clearly sketched out in damning black ink, are posted with a loud claim that they are wanted men.

Ian swallows hard, lowering his hat-covered red head unassumingly as they hastily leave the town’s limits. They give the unwelcoming population a wide and safe berth as they continue onwards on a North-West trail, that Ian doesn’t actually see among the endless and empty lands, but Mickey seems certain of.

“Why do you think there were so many?” he asks after a while, the nervous feeling in the pit of his stomach doing little to abate on its own.

Mickey himself still looks tense, but he clears his throat and then answers him rather calmly, doing his best to reassure him, “It just means someone spotted us at some point. Maybe back in New Landing”.

He spits to the side of his horse, having little else to say on the matter.

Ian grimaces though, New Landing…that’s where he had openly called Mickey ‘ _Mick_ ’ in front of a shopkeeper by accident. “ _All our actions can have sorry consequences cowboy”,_ Mickey had reminded him after they left, but it had seemed like they got off scot-free. Until now.

Maybe the bounty hunter notices the strained look on his face, because when he speaks again its in a firm but comforting tone, “Don’t worry Gallagher. If they really wanted to find us, they’d be putting in more fucking effort than just planting a half-dozen wanted posters here and there among the clueless locals”.

Ian looks over at Mickey, who’s smiling at him, and he seems very sure of himself. So Ian slowly relaxes, figuring they just have to outride the rumors that might have spread past New Landing. At least their wanted posters were separate, so no one was looking for two men with their descriptions travelling together just yet.

They ride on North-West for another hour or so before Diablo starts to snort and toss his head out of the blue, Mickey frowning at him as he heels him and tries to get him to keep going forward.

“What’s up with him?” Ian asks, nudging his own horse into a stop.

Mickey gives him a look that’s so scathing it almost makes him blush, but instead Ian just rolls his eyes at Mickey’s sarcastic response, “That’s right, I speak horse. Almost fucking forgot. Diablo, the fucks your problem?”

The horse keeps tugging his head to the right though, so eventually Mickey just shrugs, “Alright Ian, fuck it. We’re going this way”.

“Uh…ok” Ian answers, his own horse following Diablo happily down some slopes of greyish colored earth and then down into a little valley filled with green brush, some trees, and rock. Within five or so minutes, Mickey is squinting up ahead of them, spotting something blue and eye catching at ground level.

**Ash Springs,**

**Nevada**

“Oh shit… Ian look, we’re in the springs! Good boy Diablo” Mickey says, giving his insistent steed a grateful pat as the horse continues to walk eagerly towards a large pool of crystal blue water.

“We’ll have to boil our own drinking water” Mickey says, sliding down from Diablos’ side as they reach the pool of water, clear and still, but not safe for their own consumption. The horses on the other hand, drink their fill before wandering a bit to inspect the brush and graze, while Ian and Mickey fill their little cookpot with water and build a small fire to boil it over.

While Mickey tends to filling their canteens, Ian sticks his hands in the water to wash his face off, and his ginger eyebrows lift in surprise at the pleasant temperature. “It’s warm Mick, like a bath!” he calls over his shoulder.

Mickey’s own dark eyebrows initially come together in confusion, but as he inspects it himself, he nods, remembering. “I heard about warm springs being out in Nevada, didn’t ever really think they were fucking real though”.

“Well fuck… I don’t know about you”, Ian says with a grin, tossing his Stetson hat to the ground and undoing his belt eagerly, “But I’m gonna have a bath. Gimme your bar of soap”.

Mickey nods, reaching into the pack he had removed from Diablo’s saddle for said bar of lye cleanser as he watches Ian finish stripping with a raised eyebrow of interest before actually tossing the bar, Ian reaching out to catch it expertly.

When Ian actually gets in, sinking down into the beautiful warm water with a low and appreciative groan, Mickey bites his lip.

Ian is spreading his long arms out in the water, loving the feeling of freshness already washing over him as the collection of dirt and dust on his skin sinks away. He dips his head beneath the water’s surface, rubbing his hands through his wet red hair vigorously. Gasping and blinking as he comes back up, he pauses and then immediately zones in to watch a turned around Mickey taking off all his clothes with great interest.

There goes his Stetson hat…his beige cotton shirt…leather belt and canvas trousers, old drawers. Mickey then turns around in just his damn boots and smirks, knowing damn well Ian was watching him this whole time, “You lookin at my ass Gallagher?” he asks, a dark eyebrow raised in mock threat.

It’s a perfect ass. What else would he be looking at in the middle of nowhere?

“No” Ian lies with a huge grin, swimming towards the plant filled edge of the pool where Mickey is yanking his boots off and tossing them to land with the rest of their clothes.

He puts a protective hand over his groin as he slips down into the water, causing Ian to roll his eyes right before he pulls him in close against his body, the water splashing out between them as their firm chests collide.

Mickey’s blue eyes are already getting hazy, his interest in being in the pool having less to do with getting clean and more to do with getting dirty, but Ian’s actually thinking its about time they _both_ get a little clean.

He grabs the bar of lye soap and without another word, pushes Mickey’s head down under the water, who comes up fighting and gasping within seconds, “The fuck Gallagher?” he demands, rubbing his eyes.

Ian just laughs, grabbing his dark head and rubbing the soap bar against it until he gets some decent suds going.

“…That actually feels pretty good” Mickey finally admits, closing his eyes as Ian massages his skull. Ian hums in response, working his lathered hands down Mickey’s shoulders and chest too, until his hands finally meet the water and the soap starts to dissipate.

“Your turn?” Mickey asks somewhat reluctantly, reaching for the bar again. Ian has to sink a little in the water to give him better access to the top of his head, but soon his eyes are closing in comfort as Mickey’s strong fingers work absolute wonders on his head, neck, and shoulders.

He drifts off into some state of semi-relaxation, half floating while he gets a completely amazing massage, until he suddenly feels a strong fist gripping around his erection that had previously been bobbing lazily underwater.

Apparently not missed by the bounty hunter’s sharp eyes.

Ian gasps at the incredible sensation of Mickey’s fist sliding smoothly up and down its length. “It’s slippery” he says in wonder, his mind already racing with the possibilities at the combination of that and the wonderfully warm water, that didn’t make his cock shrink defensively like cold rivers would.

“Yeah?” Mickey pants, open mouthed and searching his heated eyes as he continues to work him. Ian’s forehead is already creasing in pleasure though, and he knows he’s not going to last long at this pace and with _this_ sensation, so he puts one hand out to push Mickey away, loving the way his partner’s eyebrows raise sharply in indignation.

“Lean over Mick” he urges, pushing against his back towards the shallowest part of the pool. Seeing what he’s getting at, Mickey obediently climbs up and gets on his hands and knees, the water barely covering his calves while Ian stands in the deeper portion, spreading his wet cheeks apart with his large hands.

Clean, dripping and glistening, Ian finds a strange thought forming in his head, and he leans in close, lowering his hot tongue to graze across Mickey’s opening.

The other man instantly yelps at the contact, whipping his head around in disbelief, “Did you just fucking-” “Sorry” Ian hastily apologizes, “It just looked so…did it feel gross?” he asks guiltily.

Mickey scratches at his dark hairline, slowly reddening as he admits with some obvious embarrassment, “Well, no, it uh…it felt really fucking good”.

Ian bites his lip, taking another bold chance. “…Then shut up and let me do it”. He sees Mickey’s blue eyes flash sharply at his tone, but then closes his own as he lowers himself again, letting only Mickey’s moans and sharp intakes of breath guide his movements from now on.

The tight ring of muscles feels ribbed against his tongue, curious and exciting, and he feels flames growing in his belly from Mickey’s new sounds as he reaches down to stroke himself for some relief.

Finally unable to hold out any longer, he rewets his hand with some lye soap and water, stroking himself twice more to get that slippery feeling back before he presses up against Mickey, who had been waiting rather patiently with blown out eyes and a short circuiting brain at what Ian would fucking do to him next.

“ _Jesus,_ Ian” Mickey groans loudly and shamelessly as he slowly sinks inside of him, Ian’s own stomach tightening at how different it felt, how much more easily he could slide in compared to when he was just using spit, “Fuckin go harder” his partner urges.

Ian flattens his hands against Mickey’s back for leverage, the same hands eventually scrambling to hold his smooth sides as he slams into him repeatedly with gusto, Mickey jerking forward with each well aimed thrust, he’s practically squirming beneath him. “Gallagher” he finally gasps, “Turn, turn”.

The two of them splash violently in the warm and shallow water as they hastily rearrange themselves to face each other, lips crashing together hard as they quickly pant and push into an incredible climax that has Mickey calling out Ian’s name so loudly, his ears flush red with both pleasure and pride.

“Oh my God” he mutters afterwards, leaning in to kiss Mickey as they both try to catch their breaths, “That was fucking…amazing. You’re amazing”. “Shut up” Mickey smiles against his lips, “That was all you cowboy, c’mere”.

If Ian’s thanks for his experiment with the tongue and the lye soap is soft kisses, he can tell he did a damn good job, because his lips are puffy and almost sore by the time Mickey is finally done with him.

When they finally pull themselves out from the warm spring, satiated in every way possible as they dry off and nibble on dried pemmican for dinner, the sun is setting across the open Nevada land, casting a warm and peaceful glow over everything.

It’s Mickey’s absolute favorite time of day, and he gazes over at Ian softly as the other man crouches by the fire wearing only his trousers, adding more sticks to feed it with.

Whenever he looks at that cowboy, he gets the same feeling settling over his mind and heart as he does when he sees a warm and beautiful sunset, a numinous mountain range, or a riveting landscape just waiting to be explored.

Like he’d never get sick of looking at it, and was lucky just to be in its presence. And to be acknowledged by a sight like that…

Ian turns and smiles at him, “Too bad about Rushwater eh? Would have been nice to have something fresh to cook for dinner. Pemmican’s not bad though”.

Mickey shakes his head slowly, licking his bottom lip and squinting slightly at Ian’s perfect outline as the bright sun lowers behind him.

“Fuck that town. I got everything I need right here”.


	7. Canyon Fever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Old Western Slang:
> 
> Mormon tea- liquor

**Ash Springs,**

**Nevada**

They spent another two days by the springs, lounging, fucking, swimming, washing their clothes and all their supplies, and filling every container they have with drinkable water before they have to accept its time to move on.

“I wish we could just stay here” Ian finally admits as they pack everything back onto their two well rested horses, and Mickey nods, looking unusually tired, “I know cowboy. Me too”.

“Maybe we can settle down by a quiet river or a creek in Oregon” Ian says hopefully, but then he frowns, “We got to find some way to warm the water a bit though…like a big, warm, tub. Just like this”.

He expects some sort of response from Mickey, but is greeted with silence. Glancing over at the bounty hunter as he pulls himself up onto Diablo’s back, his normally expressive companion just seems uncomfortable.

“Mick?”

“Yeah?” 

“Did you hear what I said?”

“Warm water” Mickey repeats dully, and Ian nods, feeling sort of stupid.

“Just an idea” he says softly, and Mickey nods back, finally giving him a little smile. Ian smiles too, figuring he’s just thinking of some way to make it happen. God he was lucky to have this man by his side.

He sings soulfully to keep them entertained as the two of them continue to ride along a rocky trail later that day at sunset, their horses carefully sidestepping each hazardous stone, clearly wanting to pull back towards the trees, but following their masters pulls at their reigns.

Initially Mickey was smiling at Ian’s choice of a travelling ballad, but by the end of the song he’s got some sort of a strange look on his face.

_“All that I know, all that I see, all that I feel inside of me…all that I’ve done, all that I’ve tried…there must be more to this wonderful, terrible, beautiful life…”_

Mickey’s expression is quickly becoming one of discomfort as he is jostled along in his saddle, and then he suddenly retches loudly as soon as Ian is finished, leaning over Diablo’s side to vomit down into the earth.

At first Ian just laughs, thinking maybe their breakfast that day of a wily gopher snake he had shot and cooked over the fire just hadn’t agreed with him.

“My singing that bad?” he chuckles. Mickey wipes his mouth against the back of his hand as he comes back up, and shakes his dark head emphatically.

 _Come to think of it…_ Ian suddenly realizes _, he had barely even eaten at breakfast,_ shoving more than half his portion back to him.

Ian nudges his horse to stop, and in turn Mickey does the same, looking grateful. “You feeling okay?” Ian asks, studying his especially pale face.

“Stomach’s just throwing punches. Mind if we pull over for the night? I’m feeling a knock at the backdoor too”. Mickey grimaces, putting a hand across his stomach tenderly as he looks at a small grouping of trees not far from them.

Ian nods, glad they are at least out of the desert landscape if he’s not feeling well, “Yeah of course”.

He makes a small and warm campfire for them to sleep beside as Mickey takes off into the trees for privacy, leaving Ian in just the company of their grazing horses. When Mickey finally returns, he looks exhausted, and Ian fusses over him a little more than usual, but Mickey of course brushes all his concerns aside, saying he’s fine, and they eventually drift off into a deep sleep together.

Ian knows something is really wrong when he wakes up before Mickey the next morning.

At first, he is pleased to find the bounty hunter still sleeping peacefully across from him, because he always wakes up before him, but as Ian turns his head to look at his face more closely, he notices Mickey’s forehead is covered in a sheen of sweat, and his skin is even paler than usual, making his veins appear more visibly.

He immediately reaches out to shove Mickey awake, his first instinct being one of fear, and the other man’s eyes slowly open, taking a while to focus on him, they seem dull and lackluster.

Ian’s heart thuds with worry in his chest. He looks so much worse than he did yesterday…

Reaching a hand out tentatively, he presses it against Mickey’s forehead and almost shrinks away from the heat. Mickey’s skin feels like the hide of a horse that’s been running in the desert sun all day, but they are in the shade.

“What’s your problem?” Mickey mumbles, slowing pulling himself into a semi-seated position as he realizes how squirrely Ian is acting. But then his head sways slightly, and he looks nauseas again, his face getting paler.

Ian watches, his forehead creasing with worry as Mickey vomits again without even getting up to move away from where they are both sitting. He grimaces when he’s done and turns back around, but his apologetic expression quickly changes when he takes in Ian’s.

“Gallagher…I’m fine. It’s probably just something I ate yesterday. That gopher snake maybe” he tries to argue, as he slowly pulls himself up.

“But I’m fine, and I ate it too” Ian argues back adamantly, bringing him back down with a firm hand on his arm, “Listen, we aren’t leaving here until you’re better. I’ll boil some water, make you some tea to settle your stomach”.

“Mormon tea” Mickey replies, his dry lips cracking into a tired and grateful smile as he lays back down. But as the day goes on, he only seems to worsen.

Sleeping for most of it, he tosses and turns often while moaning in his sleep, and his fever rages on the entire day.

All Ian can think of while seeing him like that is the time his sister Debbie had Canyon Fever, and how the doctor had been entirely convinced she was gonna die, not mincing his words with the worried family. Miraculously, she had managed to pull through, but that was with all the care a doctor could give in the West.

How was Mickey supposed to fare out here, in the middle of nowhere, with no medications, no herbal remedies anywhere in sight? All of his symptoms seemed exactly like the ones Debbie had the past fall.

Canyon Fever was vicious, and struck hard and fast, almost out of nowhere.

By nighttime, when Mickey periodically wakes up from his restless sleeps, he is confused and incoherent, making little sense as he talks to someone that Ian can’t see, and his concern is only growing.

“ _Don’t. Don’t, I didn’t do it_ …” Mickey mutters, shaking his head.

Ian’s eyes start to prick with terrified tears, and he holds Mickey close, preventing him from rolling too much when he falls asleep again. He strokes his dark and sweaty hair with one hand, pressing his lips to his hot forehead at the same time in a desperate attempt to comfort him. 

By morning, Mickey settles comfortably in his arms, dozing more peacefully, but it does little to alleviate Ian’s almost nauseating fears.

Debbie had gone back and forth multiple times, and it was common of Canyon Fever to do that to its victims. They’d appear as if they were getting better, and then just die suddenly. All Ian can think of is what it would do to him if he lost Mickey now. He didn’t even want to make it to Oregon without him by his side anymore.

“I don’t want to be alone” he whispers to himself, terrified, and a hot tear rolls from his heavy green eyes down to Mickey’s forehead, the other man stirring a bit as the second and third one falls.

Mickey finally blinks up at him, eyes creasing in worry as he sees that he’s crying.

“What…” his voice cracks, but he’s in a present state of mind, “Why are you crying?”

Ian’s chin trembles slightly as he shakes his head above him, finding little comfort in the fact that he’s aware and making sense again. The same thing had happened with their neighbor that made Debbie sick, and that little girl didn’t make it. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help” he whispers.

Mickey glances downwards, his blue eyes still dull, but then he shakes his head, “Ian. Don’t worry. I’m fine…I’m never sick for more than a day or two. Takes a lot more than a fever to put Mad Mick out. You should probably keep your distance though”.

Ian grits his teeth in frustration, ignoring that last comment. He hadn’t gotten sick from Debbie, and if he was going to get sick from Mickey it would have been too late anyways.

“If this is Canyon Fever you could die Mickey. I need you to take this seriously…” He thinks back to the last town they had passed, there was bound to be something that could help bring Mickey’s burning temperature down in one of the stores, “…and I need to get you some medicine. I’ll go back to Rushwater, and you can rest here until I get back” he says, getting more excited at his idea.

Trying to pull himself up in absolute protest at Ian’s apparently outrageous plan and failing, the bounty hunter’s weakness only solidifies Ian’s decision. Still, Mickey tries to narrow his blue eyes at him, “I swear to fucking God Ian. Our posters were all over Rushwater, why do you think I told you we couldn’t stop there?”

“That was before” Ian insists.

“That was now. Listen to me you fucking dimwit, if you put your life on the line for mine again, I’ll kill you myself, you hear? It’s not fucking Canyon Fever”.

Even as his words appear harsh and full of piss and vinegar, Mickey can barely hold his head up straight, and when he vomits from getting worked up again Ian almost starts to leak tears, the sight of him like that unnerving him more than anything else he’s seen since he’s been on the run.

“Gallagher” Mickey says weakly, “I need you to promise me you won’t go back there”. He looks like he’s close to passing out again, and Ian shakes his head in sad denial.

“Mick…I can’t go on without you. I’ll never make it there. I don’t even want to anymore if you’re not coming with me” he whispers, reaching out to grab his clammy hand.

Before Mickey gives back into the heavy fever induced drowsiness that pulls him down again, he mumbles to the concerned redhead in his best attempt at reassurance, “Don’t go. I told you cowboy…I’m never leaving you…”

-

When Mickey wakes up and is actually fully aware again, what feels like many hours later, maybe even an entire day, he breathes in deeply, pleased to find there is no longer a sense of nausea plaguing him, and it appears his fever has broken too.

Opening his still slightly tired eyes from his insane ordeal though, he glances around for Ian, ready to prove his point a little gratefully that it was most likely not in fact Canyon Fever, but some other illness he had managed to ward off with nothing more than a few days rest.

And maybe a lot of care from the cowboy, that didn’t hurt either. It was nice having someone care, he could admit to himself privately. Resting on his elbows, Mickey frowns as there is no sight of the redhead anywhere near him.

And when he turns over to where the horses are tied and sees only Diablo, worry jumps into his throat. He quickly scrambles upwards to his feet, and when standing finds a note scratched hastily into the earth a few feet away from where he had been sleeping.

_ Getting medicine. Stay here. _

“For fuck’s sake!” Mickey swears, his heart sinking like a nasty weight in his chest.

He should had tied up the damn cowboy up so he couldn’t pull this shit! He quickly unropes Diablo from the tree in panic without a second thought and rides right through the message scratched hastily into the dirt, heading for the last town as fast as he can as he tracks Ian’s trail.

He has no idea how long he was actually out for, how long Ian was gone, or anything else for that matter, but he doesn’t see any clear sign of the cowboy or his dark horse as he approaches the outskirts of the town cautiously.

No, the only thing he sees is a crowd of curious onlookers in the street, hovering outside the sheriff’s office.

Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you were wondering, Canyon Fever isn't a real thing, I made it up, but illnesses like that usually would be deadly at the time. I'll try and post the next chapter soon because this one is kind of a cliffhanger!


	8. Stupid Fucking Cowboy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly probably one of my favorite chapters to write! 
> 
> Old Western Slang:  
> yack= idiot  
> up stakes= disappear, take off in a hurry

**Town of Rushwater,**

**Nevada**

Ian rests his sorry forehead against the cool metal bars of the Sheriff’s cell he is currently being held against his will in, cursing at himself repeatedly.

The coast had seemed clear enough as he rode back into the town of Rushwater on his own, though perhaps the fact that he had to rip down another one of his own ‘WANTED’ posters coming in should have been enough of a sign for him to cut and run right there.

But he couldn’t.

Not when Mickey’s life was on the line… it was worth risking his own to save him, he thought desperately.

The normally seemingly invincible bounty hunter had been more and more absent minded and ill to his stomach over the past twenty-four hours, and so Ian _had_ to break his promise not to leave, as much as he knew Mickey might never forgive him for that.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Tying his dark horse outside of ‘Willy’s General Supplies’, Ian pulls his Stetson hat down low and casually goes inside, pretending he is perusing some of the thinly lined shelves as he is watched closely by the woman behind the counter.

Her husband, undoubtedly Willy himself, doesn’t seemed too bothered by his unfamiliar presence, but the woman seems a little more than interested in the stranger occupying her store.

He needs to hurry up and get the hell out of here.

“Pardon me” he calls out, approaching the counter with his green eyes cast low, “Do you have any elixirs for fevers, vomiting?”

Ian relaxes slightly as the man without question nods and turns to check the shelves beneath his front counter, and the woman finally stops looking at him, going instead to restock a shelf behind him.

“Ah yes, here it is. Few liquid drops of this on the tongue should help settle stomach and lower fevers” Willy says with a kind smile, “Four dollars”.

Ian smiles back as he quickly reaches into his pocket for some money, but his heart just about stops beating inside in his damn chest as he looks up again and notices the poster directly behind the man’s fucking head with his own face sketched onto it.

He freezes, swallowing hard, and the woman stocking the shelves behind him suddenly knocks into him, making him drop his coins.

“Oh, I’m so sorry sir” she apologizes in a friendly tone, but as he waves it off with a nervous smile and bends to quickly pick them up himself, she snatches his hat from his head and lets out an audible gasp at the sight of his red hair.

“I knew it! I knew! Get the gun Willy!” she shrieks.

Ian waves his hands frantically, trying to get her to calm down, “No, no, you don’t understand! Please, I need to get this medicine to-“

“Boy, I suggest you be quiet. It’s likely for your own good. Samantha, go get the sheriff” the man behind the counter says, raising a gun to aim at him sorrowfully.

 Slowly, in agony as he realizes what he’s done, Ian raises his hands in defeat.

As soon as the squirrely wife runs off to get the sheriff, Ian tries pleading with the man, who seemed more understanding than her in his eyes, “Please, I’m scared my partner is going to die if I don’t get this medicine to them” he begs.

“Well…maybe I can deliver it for you. Where are they son?” Willy offers kindly, but Ian shakes his head desperately, he can’t let anyone go anywhere near where Mickey is camped out, lest they recognize him too.

The sheriff arrives in a hurry, slamming Ian down into the counter rougher than is necessary to cuff him, and Ian’s eyes well with tears, not from pain, but from the knowledge that he’s probably never going to see Mickey again.

 He left him ill and alone, and he could die. The thought makes him feel wild.

“Bitch!” he yells to the woman as he is dragged forcefully out of the store, struggling the entire time, and he’s surprised and irritated to see the crowd that has already gathered in the streets to see an outlaw being apprehended, “Fuck you!” he yells, “Fuck all of you!”

He’s infuriated, panicking, and losing all sense of control as he is dragged kicking and fighting all the way to the sheriff’s office before being thrown in a cell, and locked in without mercy.

He rattles the bars loudly with his hands, still swearing as the sheriff tries to get him to calm down, but it takes a while before Ian realizes he might actually be digging himself into a bigger hole acting this way.

“Please” he says as calmly as he can, his voice still shaking, “I’m not who you think I am”.

“You’re Ian Gallagher, wanted for both attempted rape and a possible relation to the murder of Sir William Hossman. Is the other outlaw around these parts too? Mad Mick?” the sheriff asks, hand on his gun as he narrows his eyes at Ian.

Ian carefully makes his face as blank as possible, “Who?”

“They thought maybe you two were working together. Never mind. Listen, you’ll be staying here for the next couple days until we decide if you will be tried and hanged either here, or back in Kansas. Likely here, considering you have a habit of dodging the law…”

Ian trails out mentally as the sheriff begins to go over his legal rights to a lawyer, closing his eyes as he tries to steady his racing heart. Imagining Mickey waiting for him out in wilderness…not knowing he can’t return to his side, is just about killing him.

He spends the entire day fretting behind bars, with only the company of the portly sheriff, who eventually falls asleep by nightfall in his chair placed a few feet away from Ian, feet propped up on his desk.

Ian watches him bitterly as the hours of the night go on, unable to consider sleep himself for even an instant. Worry is gnawing at his stomach and his mind, but the strange thing is… he’s less afraid of dying than he is of living without Mickey Milkovich by his side.

-

Mickey wait carefully just out of sight in the canvas of trees near to the edge of the town, watching the goings on in Rushwater intently the entire day long, like the hunter he was born to be.

There’s no doubt in his troubled mind now that Ian was caught here, the sickly truth of it hitting him like a bullet when he sees the horse Ian had been riding being led away to the stable to be resold.

That means they know who he is, and they know he will be sentenced to death. The dead have no need for possessions.

He still feels hot and flushed, but his fever has broken, and his temperature is just high from being so damn agitated. He’s not only furious at Ian, he’s furiously _scheming_. He’s got one chance to do this right, or they’re both dead men.

Though its perhaps better than the alternative.

He’s never broken an outlaw out of a jail before, but he’s delivered plenty to one, and he knows that the middle of the night in a sheriff’s office is the most opportune time to do so. As a bonus, the streets will be empty, and there will only be one man guarding the cells holding Ian or any other possible prisoners, which narrows the possibility of witnesses down drastically.

Hopefully, and likely in a town this size, Ian’s the only one in holding, or that could present a whole new set of problems. Mickey knew Ian was innocent, but he didn’t much like the thought of releasing actual criminals back onto the streets just so they’d keep their mouths shut. Well…he’ll deal with that when the time comes, he thinks, gritting his teeth.

Mickey bites his lip so hard as the night finally falls over Rushwater that he draws blood, but he continues to crack his knuckles in agitation, letting the hours pass until the last drunkards have finally left the town’s tiny saloon.

He grabs Diablos’ reigns and leads him quietly up the dark and empty street, “Stay here” he mutters, not wasting any time in tying him. He’s not sure how fast they’ll have to cut and run, and he can’t risk taking the time to untie a rope. He trusts Diablo to listen.

Mickey creeps up to the wooden door of the sheriff’s office where he knows the holding cells will be, holding his gun cocked to his chest as he silently counts to three before kicking the door clean open. The loud but solitary sound of course wakes the sheriff, who looks as if he had been sleeping, but before he can say a damn word Mickey aims his colt in the direction of his head, approaching swiftly, the door shuts behind him.

“Make a fucking sound and I’ll blow your brains out” he says lowly.

Red and flustered, the man ogles him in disbelief, clearly recognizing him, but Mickey’s attention is sharply drawn to Ian’s panicked hissing in the cell behind him.

“What _the fuck_ are you doing here! Are you fucking crazy! Leave!”

-

“Could say the same to you, fuckin yack!” Mickey shoots back without even a hint of teasing in his tone, and Ian is actually a little taken aback as he realizes how angry the bounty hunter is.

His black is hair is tufted wildly from running his hand through it, and Ian can see he is no longer sick, which is both a blessing and a curse.

“You” Mickey commands, redirecting his attention to the sheriff, “Unlock his cell and step back. Go anywhere near the gun on your desk and I’ll chop off your damn hand”.

The sheriff, purple with anger but with no other option, does as he is told, and then Mickey hands Ian his gun once he approaches him, who has enough sense to hold it trained on him as Mickey binds and gags the sheriff before shoving him back into Ian’s empty cell.

“You’re not gonna kill him?” Ian whispers.

Mickey bites his lip, looking like he is holding back a rant, but instead he answers calmly, as if Ian is a small and stupid child. “No I’m not going to murder the sheriff, the gun will wake everyone up, and then we’ll have a fleet of men after us once they realize we killed a man of the law. Okay? Any more questions?”

Ian shakes his head in embarrassment, reddening slightly, he quickly grabs his own possessions and a handful of others from the sheriff’s desk drawer as Mickey relocks the cell, slipping the iron key into his pocket when he’s finished.

“We need to up stakes cowboy” he mutters, grabbing Ian’s arm and dragging him out of the office. He glances around warily before they step into the street, closing the door carefully before he whistles quietly for Diablo. Pulling himself up first, he offers Ian a hand to do the same, but not in a particularly kind way.

Ian sinks into the saddle behind him, wrapping his arms around him, he lets out a worried sigh, “I’m so glad you’re okay” he whispers, feeling the bounty hunter’s stiffness relax just slightly. He doesn’t say anything though, just kicks Diablo and takes off down the road, the two of them leaning carefully to make the ride swift and quiet.

They ride nonstop for hours without speaking, well into day break and then some, before Diablo starts to foam at the mouth, and then they pull deeper into a well shrouded forest.

Exhausted, they both slip off the heavily overworked horse and collapse onto the forest floor, Mickey waving his dark Stetson hat against his flushed face but not saying a single word.

Ian just stares at him until the bounty hunter finally snaps, “ _What?”_

“Why are you so mad at me?”

Mickey gets up in disbelief, immediately getting riled up. “ _Why am I so_ \- are you fucking kidding me! I told you I was fucking fine and you went off and almost got your stupid ass killed to what, get me some magic fucking plant water? God dammit Ian I-“

“I did it for you, asshole!” Ian shouts back, getting right up in Mickey’s flushed face as he jabs at his chest harshly, “You looked like you were dying, you fucking assh-“

His words are cut off roughly as Mickey forcefully slams him up against the tree he was standing in front of. Grabbing his throat with his harshly tattooed fingers, Ian wonders for a second if Mickey’s going to throttle him, but instead the other man lunges forward and kisses him, pressing his lips so hard against Ian’s it almost hurts.

Without another word, they start to hurry out of their restricting clothes, Mickey eventually muttering into Ian’s lips as he reaches down for his quickly stiffening cock, “Stupid cowboy”.

Ian presses his forehead down into Mickey’s shoulder, gasping as his grip tightens around him, “Why’d you come after me if then if I’m so stupid, huh?” he demands, neither of their tempers subsiding as they give into a more pressing need.

Mickey forces his head back up, blue eyes burning into green as he locks on and answers, “If you haven’t fucking figured it out yet cowboy, I’m always gonna come for you”.

Licking his bottom lip as he reaches out with his own hand to fuck Mickey in return, Ian nods to him, “You’re damn right you will”.


	9. We Are Dynamite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for larger spaces between updates than normal lately! Midterm season...

**Wild Country,**

**Nevada**

A day or two of extremely vigilant hiding within the shrouded forest they had escaped to followed by some tentative but very thorough scouting of the surrounding areas bodes rather well for the cowboy and the bounty hunter, because it appears their unlawful actions in the town of Rushwater didn’t lead to a man hunt.

Although, that was likely solely due to Mickey’s call on not killing the sheriff before they fled.

Ian would have been arrested ten times over by now if it wasn’t for his partner’s sensibility when it came to surviving the wilder parts of the west, and he’s more grateful than words can express for that. Keeping that good fortune of escape in mind however, he can’t imagine why Mickey is so damn reluctant to move onwards in their journey, or even fucking relax a little bit. In fact, he still seems just as worried as he was before.

He wants to push for an answer, but that never seems to work with the often on-edge bounty hunter, so he simply waits for Mickey to open up to him, and surely enough, it comes.

“We have a problem cowboy” Mickey states rather plainly the next day, Ian frowning in concern at his complete frankness after almost two days of aloofness.

“What is it?” he asks carefully.

Mickey grimaces, raising one perfectly shaped dark eyebrow in worry as he scratches into the forest floor with a broken stick absentmindedly, “Well, we lost the other horse, and for starters, Diablo really can’t be carrying two grown ass men all day every day once we move on. It’s too much for a horse his fuckin size. Second, I put half of my money in your saddle bag, and we lost all of yours, so we’re officially running low”.

Ian’s mouth drops open in shock, “ _What?_ Why the fuck would you do that Mickey!”

Of course he’d lost his damn own coins back in Rushwater, the sheriff didn’t keep actual monetary possessions in his office for him to steal back, but he can’t imagine why Mickey would put his own money with him!

The bounty hunter heaves a rather weary sigh, “In case I ever… you know, got fuckin shot or taken in or something. I wanted you to be okay without me”.

His tone is sincere, but Ian rolls his eyes with an annoyance that is truly only half-hearted, because his heart actually aches a little at the admission.

 “That might be the stupidest fucking thing you’ve ever said. Like I would ever be okay without you…come here”.

He reaches out to pull Mickey closer in to himself, kissing the other man enthusiastically before Mickey eventually shakes his head with a laugh, breaking their embrace. “I appreciate that Ian, I do. But we need to get our hands on some actual before we really fly cowboy”.

Ian thinks hard for a moment, searching his partner’s hard blue eyes. He’s pretty sure he already knows what Mickey is thinking… so he suggests it himself, thinking maybe Mickey is reluctant to spring the idea on him. “We’re already wanted…. we could rob a bank.”

Judging by the lack of surprise on Mickey’s handsome face, that’s exactly what his partner was thinking. They were rather cornered, desperate and without many options, so it wasn’t exactly shocking to consider.

Bank robberies were more common than one might think, and Mickey would have gone after enough criminals of such in the prime of his bounty hunting days, so he would also know how they generally went down.

Mickey finally nods slowly, confirming Ian’s suggestion.

“Yeah but that doesn’t mean we should be foolish about it, still gonna need to cover our faces with handkerchiefs and shit. It’s gonna be risky, but I don’t think we have any other options at this point. Next small town we find…we’re going in”.

-

The night before their carefully planned robbery, Mickey giving more precision and thought than any other ‘normal’ bank robber would bother to spend planning it all, Ian takes him underneath the stars, loving his body like it’s the last chance he’ll ever get.

Because now he knows. They both know, that it always could be.

Until they made it safely towards Oregon, and resettled permanently in a state that had little concern with the rest of the West’s going ons while it strived to be the most productive and successful state it could be, the chances of being recognized and hanged were still very real, and possible.

Ian landing himself in jail was proof of that, and if Mickey hadn’t of been successful in breaking him out, they never would have even gotten the chance to say goodbye to each other. Just that thought of that drives at Ian’s chest like a stake, and he gasps from his place above Mickey, who reaches up to hold the side of his face in concern.  

“What’s wrong?”

Ian nuzzles his hand in response before shaking his head, and then he pulls out carefully, resting on his knees for a moment before he stretches out naked onto the grass, cool green blades brushing against his back.

“Ian?” Mickey’s familiar voice is growing more concerned now, and he’s hovering, hovering before his face and looking like everything he’s ever needed. He reaches out, grabbing Mickey’s strong arms to encourage him to come closer.

His partner obliges, wordlessly doing what he thinks Ian needs, he straddles his abdomen and leans forwards and down, their lips meeting in silence until Ian reaches down to carefully push himself inside of Mickey again while he’s half-seated above him.

A gasp passes from Mickey’s soft lips through to his at the intrusion, and his partner’s blue eyes flash and lock onto his, filling with pleasured darkness that only grows as Ian rolls his hips experimentally.

Following his lead, while Ian grabs Mickey’s hips and thrusts upwards from the ground, Mickey gently pushes down onto him, before pulling up and going at it again harder. “Fuck” Ian practically whimpers beneath him, his sweaty red hair clinging to his forehead as Mickey rides him harder into the ground.

“This what you want cowboy?” Mickey whispers before he groans again. He pants with abandon as his voice gets a little louder, “This what you need?”

Ian nods desperately, saying only “ _Mickey”_ before launching upwards to wrap his arms around his back and hold him close, the two men finding their explosive finishes together in a way that makes Ian feel like no matter what happens tomorrow, he’ll be okay, because he’s going into it with Mickey.

**Proudbranch Bank,**

**Nevada**

Ian would be lying if he said he didn’t feel a wicked thrill viewing Mickey’s blue eyes blazing between the space where his Stetson hat ended and his red handkerchief began, covering his narrow nose and perfectly shaped mouth.

Dressed in kind, and gripping his gun firmly where it rests hidden in his pocket, Ian nods once to his partner in crime before they forcefully burst into the bank they had been standing casually in front of just seconds before, waiting for the perfect opportunity to spring.

There are two female tellers and three various aged customers inside, all of their eyes widening in fear as they take in the rather menacing duo shaking them down.

“Get on the ground!” Mickey immediately snarls at them, pointing his Colt .45 around in warning as Ian directly approaches a teller, his own weapon pointed straight at her.

“This is a robbery. Don’t make us use these” he warns, his voice lower than usual.

Neither of them have any intentions to shoot any of these innocent people, they had decided on that last night, but they need some leverage, and guns work. Besides that, there’s always a chance that someone in here could pull one back on them.

Luckily, most of the people inside are women, and all appear to be unarmed. Ian feels a flash of guilt at that, but reminds himself there is no other option now.

“Money in a sack, now. Make it fast” he says, keeping his voice firm and his hands steady. Mickey had warned him that three things were vital for this to go down well: that they are in and out of the bank as fast as possible, that nobody gets hurt, and that they stay calm and steady in what they are doing.

The teller wastes no time in hastily filling his request, but Mickey is still getting antsy from his place by the bank’s front door, where he is watching both the street and Ian’s back as the seconds pass.

“Hurry the fuck up” he finally hisses, and Ian snatches the cloth sack as soon as the teller passes it over to him. Before him and Mickey take off, he turns to the people inside the establishment, “None of you saw anything” he warns, his voice sounding less like his own.

Mickey laughs underneath his handkerchief, and Ian reddens slightly as they hurry outside, “What? What’s so funny?” he demands as they both leap onto Diablo’s back, making the horse bolt around the bank and directly away from the town instead of fleeing through the roads.

“Ian, they all fuckin saw us. That’s like saying ‘nobody was here’. We robbed their asses” Mickey shouts behind himself, dust flying up around the them from Diablo’s hooves beating against the earth.

“Fuck off, I didn’t know what else to say” Ian laughs breathlessly, the adrenaline still pumping through his veins like fire from their success. “Surprised you didn’t say sorry” Mickey teases.

Turning back to look at him, he lowers his red handkerchief from his face and presses his tongue to the corner of his mouth as they both bounce in the saddle, blue eyes alight with energy and life.

“You think I’m just some good country boy” Ian responds huskily, removing his own handkerchief in kind.

“Mmm” Mickey hums in agreement, eyes drifting over him unabashedly, “Kinda liked seeing you all hard and dangerous in there… made me hard”. 

Ian raises an eyebrow, knowing exactly what he means. It was fucking exhilarating, being partners in crime. And although neither of them would likely rob an innocent person under normal circumstances, hell, Mickey used to be an alternative form of law enforcement, when it came to protecting or providing for each other, all rules went out the proverbial window.

He knew they’d lay low now though, they had enough money to get them to Oregon and set up before they found work as long as nothing else went wrong, and that was a reassuring feeling in and of itself.

Later that night, as they lay underneath the wide and open sky, the stars all shining down on them and their triumph, Ian slows his thrusts into the man lying beneath him, watching as Mickey’s blown out eyes lift to meet his own.

“I’d do anything for you” Ian says hoarsely, still arching his back and pushing in, trembling as he starts to come.

Mickey lets out a small groan of growing pleasure before he answers him in a shaky tone, “I know you would”.

“You know why though?” Ian presses, biting his lip as angles his hips upwards, purposely aiming himself to push against the spot inside Mickey that drives him wild before he goes soft.

The bounty hunter starts to come apart beneath him, gripping Ian’s shoulder so tightly with his tattooed fingers it almost hurts.

“You know why?” Ian repeats in a whisper.

Mickey thrusts his back upwards from the ground, letting out a loud and unrestricted moan right as Ian feels a liquid warmth spread between their bellies, “Cause you’re everything to me” the bounty hunter calls out, his eyes closed as he does, his pale and broad chest is heaving.

Ian’s mouth opens slightly, the two of them sweating and shaking as they hold onto each other like they’ll fall apart if they let go. Mickey seems stiff now, like he’s unsure about the weighted words that escaped from his mouth without his permission.

“Look at me” Ian whispers, and Mickey’s eyes slowly open to look back at them, an unfamiliar fear reflected in their deep blue.

Ian recognizes it, because he feels the same absolute fear in his own heart right now.

“I’d do it because I’m falling in love with you”.


	10. Wild, Wild Horses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Diablo gets more of a role here haha :) prepare for pics of horses, couldn't find ones that fit with the boys :( and please pretend the reddish/buckskin one is always Diablo, just in different lighting lol
> 
> Old Western Slang:
> 
> Three by nine smile= big smile, full extent on the jaw  
> Baked (in this context)= over-heated horse  
> Cayuse= cowboy's steed

The bravely spoken words hang like a heavy weight between the two unsteady men for a long moment as they both swiftly search each other’s eyes for different things, different meanings, while never once breaking their hold on each other.

“You say you’re falling in love with me?” Mickey questions slowly, his pale forehead creasing at the words. Even as he says it though, voice thick, his strong hands roam over Ian’s sturdy arms like he’s trying to physically memorize the moment he heard them while he’s still held beneath him.

Ian doesn’t move from his place above the bounty hunter as he simply nods his confirmation, unable to speak due to his sudden cotton mouth of nerves.

The two of them still coming down from their almost joint climaxes, he now feels unsteady and uncertain of the words that left his mouth. Not uncertain of their meaning, but of whether he should have shared them or not.

Mickey’s dark pupils seem to dilate for a moment as he stares back up at him blankly, and he opens and then closes his mouth, like he’s unsure of how to respond to that.  “You don’t have to say it back. I just wanted you to know” Ian tells him quietly, lifting himself off of the other man gently before he turns away to start pulling on his trousers.

He hides his disappointed face as he does, trying not to show Mickey how worried he is that he won’t reciprocate his feelings. He has no way of knowing the other man is just overwhelmed in the moment, and unsure of how to express his own feelings.  

“I’m…” he hears Mickey speak behind him, and he turns to look at him as he continues to get dressed, watching the warm firelight flicker over his lover’s pale skin, the shadows highlighting all of Ian’s favorite things about his body.

“Ian…I didn’t think men could… should feel this way about each other” he hears Mickey say, quietly, almost like he’s talking to himself as he looks at the ground, frowning while he thinks.

Ian grimaces, remembering his lifetime in a quick flash and all he’d ever heard before about men like him. Men like Mickey. That it wasn’t right. Wasn’t God’s will, for them to want each other.

“Like I said” he repeats a little bitterly, “If you don’t feel the same way, you don’t have to fuckin say it”. He can feel his body starting to heat up again, but from anger this time, not arousal, and he’s having trouble hiding it. Mickey’s forehead creases even more and his head snaps up at him in annoyed disbelief, getting worked up just as quickly as Ian is while he starts to yank his own clothes back on.

“Jesus cowboy, let me finish. But you Ian…fuck. I’d throw my life away for you. I’d kill anybody who tried to hurt you. I’d cross the goddamned American Frontier for you. I’d break you out of jail without a second thought about getting myself caught. I’ve done _all_ those things, and I’d fucking do them again. For you. You really gotta ask if I fucking feel the same way about you?”

Ian just stares back at him, mouth falling open at how adamant and stubborn Mickey is that apparently, he’s felt this way all along, regardless of the fact that it had never been spoken out loud, and that he should have just fucking known that.

There’s a moment of heated silence where neither of them says anything, both looking extremely annoyed. Finally, Ian breaks and looks down at his bare feet as if he’s ashamed at his own doubt, but when he looks up again, Mickey sees the three by nine smile opening up his previously frustrated face.

“Well you don’t gotta be a prick about it. Coulda just said you feel the same way” the cowboy grins, tipping his head to the side a bit in a way that makes him look more innocent than the man has a damn right to. Mickey and him start to approach each other again, arms extended, they start to gently wrestle each other.

“Don’t I though?” Mickey asks playfully, starting to laugh gently as Ian does too.

“Well, I guess it’s your style” the cowboy agrees readily.

“I guess it is” is all Mickey says before he pulls him into a long and slow kiss, one that leaves Ian stupid and breathless when Mickey finally steps away to look at him thoughtfully. “You need to hear it though huh?” he asks, running his tattooed hand down over Ian’s arm.

Even beneath his thick cotton shirt, Ian’s pale and freckled skin tingles from the other man’s firm touch, and still feeling a little vulnerable, he just nods. Even if he already knew it, he wanted to hear it.

Mickey nods back, making sure Ian holds his steady gaze as he reassures him.

 “I love you Ian, have for a long time”.

Hearing those words… well, it’s like stepping into sunlight and feeling the warmth soak into your waiting skin, and it envelopes Ian in a peace he had never known before Mickey.

**Cherry Creek,**

**Nevada**

They travel swiftly for the next few days, moving onwards and away from Proudbranch Bank while their pockets and saddle bags are filled with the paper money and coin they had stolen together, waiting to travel safely far enough before they even dare venturing into a town to try and spend it in.

Luckily, they have enough supplies, bullets and otherwise, to last them for a while. The only problem they currently have that is really pressing on them is Diablo.

The loyal buckskin horse, while as strong and swift as a Mustang could be, was really starting to take a toll from carrying two full grown men for hours on end for multiple days, and more and more they were having to stop when they should have been travelling onwards to give the poor baked beast a rest.

Yesterday was no exception, but neither man complained about the place they chose to stop at and rest, mutually deciding to give Diablo a solid day to recuperate rather than risk his collapse.

They set up a makeshift camp on top of a large and sloping hill overlooking a flat and seemingly never-ending valley filled with green and grey brush and a scattering of wildflowers, while a creek runs nearby, supplying them with fresh water and fish to catch.

Which by the way, Ian had never learned to shoot out of the water like his damn companion could.

He fell in love with their current resting place the way he had with many others they had stopped at, just because he could imagine starting his life with Mickey just about anywhere, as long as they had a few natural resources to survive with and each other. The bounty hunter was definitely out of the two of them, the most pressed to reach their final destination.

But even knowing that, when Ian slowly wakes up the next morning, completely alone on top of the hill and spread out over Mickey’s jacket like it’s a bedroll while the morning sun beats down hotly onto his skin, he can’t make sense of what’s happening in the valley below his feet at first.

Previously empty the night before, an entire herd of wild horses had moved into and are now occupying the space near below their camp, presumably arriving early this morning to graze while he was still asleep.

With Mickey you never know, except for the one time he was deathly ill, he was always awake hours before Ian.

Frowning in confusion, the redhead squints and moves forward a few feet down the hill to watch as Mickey, still shirtless and perfect like he had been last night, edges calmly towards the herd, keeping himself pressed up closely against Diablo’s side while he leads his Mustang towards the others.

But the wily horse gets his own ideas once the herd shifts slightly to let him into the group, and he abandons Mickey, trotting award towards a young filly eagerly while Mickey stands there alone. The other horses, who had appeared not to notice Mickey before, do now, and they glance over towards him curiously while he stands there, throwing his hands up in exasperation at his horse wrecking whatever he was trying to do.

Ian starts to laugh, because surprisingly, the wild horses pay him little heed, and are in fact now more interested in the newcomer to their group, who seems to be content nuzzling and nibbling at the female he found, barging into the herd like he owned the place.

Mickey looks over towards Ian at the sound of laughter, squinting while he rests his hands on the tops of his hips, “The fuck you laughin at?”

“You” Ian calls back, admiring the fantastic view, “What the hell are you doing? Trying to make them think you’re a horse too?”

“No dumbass” Mickey yells, narrowing his blue eyes at him in exasperation, “I’m trying to catch you one”.

Well, he hadn’t been expecting that. It would solve their problem with Diablo though….and it kind of made watching the whole thing a lot more arousing, his partner shirtless, surrounded by wild horses…

“Great job” he yells back teasingly, and Mickey gives him the middle finger, “Maybe I should just catch you an ass since you like them so much”.

Ian laughs again as Mickey then returns his attention to the herd, grabbing one of the lengths of rope he’d dropped by his feet, he’s clearly determined to follow through with his plan to catch Ian a new cayuse.

The cowboy watches with renewed interest from his place by the top of the hill, but heated drama is erupting in the herd itself from Diablo’s controversial presence as he rears in an attempt to mate with his newfound filly, the dominant dark stallion of the band flattening his ears and pacing towards him, ready to throw kicks any moment for the female that should rightfully be his.

“Horny bastard” Mickey complains, shaking his head at his horse in annoyance, but then he thinks for a moment that this might actually work to his benefit, and readjusts the looped rope he’s holding.

While the herd is still distracted and shifting restlessly around him, he swings the rope outwards and throws it wide, taking two neat tries before he lands on a horse that immediately yanks away, throwing the loop off. It was a close one though.

Ian slowly shifts down the hill, not wanting to interfere but wanting to be close enough to help Mickey if he needs it, because Diablo sure as hell won’t be. He’s too busy rearing and aiming vicious kicks back at the other stallion at a distance while the mares and younger stallions watch on to see if they will end up with a new leader or keep their old one.

When Ian’s just ten feet away, Mickey’s carefully flung rope lands on a younger but solid black stallion, very likely the offspring of the one Diablo’s currently fighting with, and the horse lets out a shrill neigh of panic as soon as it feels the pull of the rope against its neck, and tries to throw it off.

“Oh shit!” Mickey hollers, getting dragged along a few feet as the horse takes several steps forward in annoyance, but digging his boots back into the earth, Mickey’s not fucking letting go. “Grab the other rope and loop him!” he yells behind himself, Ian rushing over to help as soon as he sees the struggle.

Fairly skilled from his years of herding and roping cattle with his family back in Kansas, he grabs the abandoned length of rope still lying in the brush and quickly makes a loop to throw around the horse’s neck, adding his own weight as an anchor once it lands over Mickey’s.

“C’mon cowboy!”

Mickey laughs wildly as the young horse bucks and pulls, dragging them both forward another foot and a half. By this point, the herd is breaking and taking off from the commotion, most of them running away together (including the dominant stallion) while Diablo stays to claim his prize, the filly in heat.

Ian can’t stop fucking laughing as him and Mickey both desperately hold on to the black stallion’s ropes while Diablo eagerly mounts his new filly in the background, the whole thing just seeming absolutely ridiculous at this point.

“Don’t let go!” Mickey yells firmly, “We need to tire the fucker out!”

“Why didn’t you just get a damn mare!” Ian shouts back, trying to sink his weight down towards the ground. In his experience, mares were almost always easier to tame.

Mickey looks over at him incredulously, and gestures with his free hand towards the lewd spectacle going on several feet away, “Diablo, dipshit!”

Oh yeah. Good point.

For a moment, Ian’s actually worried Diablo will just take off with the filly as she starts to gallop in the direction of her disappearing herd once he’s finished, still clearly loyal to the band although not her stallion, but he simply tosses his head in her direction and paws at the ground before he turns to loyally trot back towards Mickey.

“Don’t worry, he’s done this before” Mickey yells over the black horse’s loud and protesting neighs, noticing Ian’s hesitant expression, “He fucks around in every herd we’ve ever come across but he always comes back”.

Noticing Diablo’s return, and perhaps noting how he had challenged the dominant stallion and won, the black horse quiets as he approaches, snorting and eyes still rolling but no longer fighting the bounty hunter and the cowboy’s ropes. Mickey licks the corner of his mouth and whistles for Diablo to return to his side, quickly tying the two stallions together upon his approach.

“Dunno how we’re gonna train him while we’re on the move but there you go, ain’t another man’s horse” Mickey grins, nodding at Ian proudly while they admire their catch.

“Don’t need to” Ian says thoughtfully, watching his new steed’s behavior closely. His days on the farm had done him good. Mickey might have more experience training a wild horse, but he was familiar with them in numbers.

“He thinks Diablo is in charge, as long as we keep them tied together until he accepts me, he’s gonna follow his lead. He’s too young to challenge him back, maybe in a year or two he’ll give it a shot. Would have eventually been kicked out of that herd”.

“Shit” Mickey says, impressed, “You still gonna try and ride him though?” he sounds worried, “He’s nowhere near as bad as Diablo was when I first roped him, he was biting and kicking like mad, but I don’t know”.

“No, that would still be fuckin crazy. Gotta give him a day or two to get used to me at least” Ian answers adamantly, his new horse shying away from him nervously when he tries to reach out and pat it. Diablo meanwhile nuzzles Mickey’s shoulder, clearly satisfied with his adventurous day.

Ian does see the irony when he ties his new and nervous steed up to a sturdy tree that afternoon so he won’t run away when they move their camp to a new location, but hell he figures, he fell in love when he got to know his captor, maybe this horse will too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I need to hire like an actual digital artist to make pics up for these fics, that would be kickass. If I knew how I would XD
> 
> P.S it was subtle but did any of you catch on that the woman who freaked out back in Rushwater and turned Ian in to the sheriff was named Samantha?  
> Sammi's a bitch even in 1874 :P


	11. Breaking and Mending

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A peek into our cowboy and bounty hunter's lives on the road since I am so bad at updating lately ~
> 
> Old Western Slang:  
> 'dust' as in getting dusted- getting thrown from a horse  
> getting your back up- getting angry

**Paradise Valley,**

**Nevada**

****

“How long is this going to take?” Ian practically groans, turning in small circles as he forces the panting and agitated young black horse into faster and faster rounds around himself by snapping a switch near its heels.  

He’s been working on the training the black stallion for days on end, from high morning til low dusk, and although there’s been some notable progress, the horse is still nowhere near letting him climb onto it’s back and ride him.

Needless to say, this necessary but lengthy training has put a screeching halt in their travel plans.

“You just have to break him” a familiar voice drawls back lazily.

Ian stops turning in circles for a moment to glare at Mickey, who really has nothing to do with the issue at hand, but Ian’s hot, tired and angry from working the horse so much in the dry heat of the valley, and he’s ready to snap at just about anything.

His partner, who’s casually sitting not far away while his own buckskin horse grazes calmly beside him, removes the quirly he’s smoking from his mouth and raises an eyebrow at him warningly, “Keep your fuckin eye on him Gallagher, or he’s gonna-“

As if on cue, the stallion suddenly halts and aims a blind kick behind himself.

Still looking at Mickey instead of the horse, Ian goes down like a pile of stones as the aimed hoof makes impact. Hitting the ground almost instantly, he grabs at his chest while he gasps and tries to get much needed air back into his lungs.

“Jesus Christ!”

Mickey quickly scrambles to his feet and runs over across the uneven ground towards him. His sharp blue eyes wide and worried, he immediately drops to his knees beside Ian once he reaches his side and moves his hands over his entire body while Ian wheezes in the dust.

“Did you break anything!” he demands.

“No” Ian coughs out. The kick had been hard, but not hard enough to cause any real damage except for perhaps a wicked bruise.

Reassured that he is in fact okay, but still hovering over him, Mickey suddenly seems to get angry. “I told you to keep an eye on him!” he snaps, and Ian reaches up to shove him off. “I told you I was tired!” he shouts back.

For a moment Mickey looks like he’s sorely tempted to backhand the cowboy, but he doesn’t. Instead he just lets out a tired sigh, “Ian, that’s the whole fucking point. You’re tired yeah, but look at him, he’s exhausted. And he needs to be for you to get on his back. We need to get moving, get on to Oregon”.

“I’ll use this switch on him, that’ll teach him” Ian fumes as he grabs the makeshift sapling switch, but even as he glances over warily towards the young horse as if to make sure it heard his empty threat, his foul mood lifts a bit.

No one was holding the horse’s fraying rope to keep him from running away once Ian got hoofed, and although he was still pawing at the ground nervously, he hadn’t run off.

Noticing this missed opportunity at the same time he does, Mickey quickly reaches over and grabs the rope dangling from the horse’s side. He sounds disappointed though as he wraps it around his hand to secure the horse, “It’s better for _you_ to break him Gallagher. He’s your horse. Thought you were a damn cowboy”.

He runs one tattooed hand slowly and gently over the horse’s dark and sweaty neck, and the animal quivers, but doesn’t move, eventually letting out a soft snort from its flaring nostrils as his eyes roll to regard him curiously.

Ian’s mouth practically drops open in disbelief. The stallion had bit him every single time he tried to do that himself.

“Fuck you, I worked with stable horses, not wild ones!” he points out, less than amused by how easily Mickey seems to be able to get the horse to calm down after all those hours he spent literally running in circles.

Mickey doesn’t say anything to that however, just tips his head towards him. “C’mere” he says, impatiently waving him to his feet. Ian gets up stiffly, approaching the still rather wild horse warily, but although it shifts in place as he reaches out towards his neck to pet him, it doesn’t bite him.

“There you go cowboy. Go on, try and get on him now” Mickey says carefully, clearly pleased and feeling it might be worth a shot after all.

Ian himself feels more relaxed now from this small success, and he reaches out to grab the horse’s dark mane and heave himself upwards, remembering from instinct that he needs to be firm and confident with the animal.

They had in fact moved Diablo’s riding gear onto the horse successfully the day before, so pulling himself up with the help of stirrups and a saddle horn wasn’t a real challenge.

Waiting to see if he was going to get thrown however, was.

The horse is very still as Ian settles into the saddle comfortably and successfully, but Mickey still shakes his head anyways.

“Alright, get off”.

“Why?” Ian asks, crowing a bit inside. All that hard work had apparently finally paid off, “He’s fine”.

“He’s gonna dust you” Mickey says dubiously, still shaking his head.

“No he’s-“

Ian gets dumped on his ass less than thirty seconds later, and that’s the final straw for him. “That’s it, I’m fucking done for today! I’ve had enough of this!” he shouts, taking his Stetson hat off and throwing it to the ground in defeat. In all his life he had never been so frustrated with an animal, but most of it was really due to the pressure of time he was feeling creeping in from all directions.

They had to keep moving towards their safe point, and lingering around in the middle of nowhere trying to get a horse to even let him on its back was nothing but a waste of precious time in his mind.  

Mickey clicks his tongue at the horse without another comment and leads him back to Diablo’s side, retying them together. The slightly older and well-trained horse seems to have a calming effect on him at least, but if Ian can’t get on him, he remains useless.

Returning to Ian’s side afterwards, Mickey runs his strong hands down Ian’s well muscled arms, who feels the tension starting to leave his body ever so slightly from the firm and grounding contact.

“You’re doing fine cowboy” the bounty hunter murmurs, looking down over his sweating and tense body appreciatively. Ian can’t help but be distracted by the way Mickey’s looking at him rather lustfully now, and his temper flickers in confusion, his body wanting to give in more to something else than anger.

“Heifers are a lot easier to work with than wild horses” he mutters, but Mickey raises a dark and sharp eyebrow at him, fingering the buttons on his rolled cotton shirt and undoing them slowly, one by one.

“Last I recall, you tamed something pretty wild before” he says softly, clicking his tongue in challenge, “Did a damn good job of it too”.

Ian watches him reach the last worn button and quickly push the damp shirt downwards before moving swiftly down onto his trousers, his knees hitting the grey dust at the same moment.

He continues frowning though, right up until the moment that Mickey frees and then takes him deeply into his mouth, swallowing around his already hard length eagerly.

The other man pulls an honest groan from him as he sucks him off with absolute ardour, hands reaching around to grip Ian’s ass tightly while his head bobs up and down, Ian simultaneously knocking his hat off so he can grip his fingers tightly into Mickey’s black hair.

“That’s it” Mickey mumbles around his cock, but Ian drives his hips forward again, cutting him off as he pushes himself in deeper.

He’s not sure how much he’ll get away with here, but he fucks into Mickey’s face almost desperately, needing to feel some relief from the stress swirling in his mind.

About five wonderful minutes later he finally finishes with a deep grunt, thighs shaking with satisfaction and pleasure.

“Fuck” he pants. He falls away from Mickey once he’s released, yanking his trousers up carelessly and almost falling on his bruised ass again in the process, “I needed that”.

“You reckon?” Mickey grins, raising an eyebrow at him teasingly after he spits out his white load into the dust.

But then his face gets more serious again, “I know you’re frustrated, but you have to keep a cool head. He’s feeding off you, and you know that” he says, almost reproachfully. It’s a tone Ian’s not sure he’s ever heard coming from his mouth before.

“I do know that” he admits, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly. Now that he’s cooled down a bit, he’s rather embarrassed about losing his temper. “It’s just…we should have been in Oregon’s limits by now”.

Mickey frowns, “That’s what’s got your back up? Listen, we’re gonna get there Ian. One day or another. We’re not far now”.

“Well I just want to get to Oregon, then I reckon I’ll relax” Ian reasons.

He gets a warm smile in response. “Mt. Hood is a ways beyond the limits Ian. But I need you to understand that I will get you there, in one piece, and in due time. That’s all you need to know, all you need to worry about” Mickey promises, gripping his arm reassuringly again.

_-Later that night-_

The crickets are singing loudly tonight, Mickey thinks absentmindedly. Like a chorus among the tall grasses, separate but somehow still uniform, they buzz along the edge of his thoughts, making him sleepy.

The fire is petering out nearby, slowly crackling as it does, but the smoky warmth is still licking at his skin as he drums his fingers along his chest, looking up at the full moon as he does.

At times like this, he wishes the journey would last forever. Oregon was an end point, and while Ian felt that it held all of their answers, he wasn’t so sure of that himself.

He didn’t know much about the logging business at all, or if Ian’s brother even did either. It might have been pure hear say about there being tons of work down that way, baseless in truth.

But that didn’t really matter when he agreed to leave with Ian, never once looking back.

Because he wasn’t looking for a new career when he left. He was looking for a new life entirely, one with Ian by his side.

And whatever that meant…he was ready for it.

He lifts his head slightly to look up as he hears Ian returning from the bushes nearby, smiles in return at the faint curl of Ian’s lips once he appears.

“You look good in the moonlight, I ever tell you that?” the cowboy asks, and Mickey grins as he lowers himself down onto the grass beside him, fingers drifting across his arm while he presses against him, “Your skin looks like porcelain”.

“Yeah well I don’t break so easy” Mickey says back, raising an eyebrow at him.

“No” Ian agrees.

Lowering his mouth to the side of Mickey’s neck, he nuzzles his head down to kiss beside his throat, stubble scratching stubble while he moves his lips in soundless patterns.

Mickey lets out a low and contented sigh, still staring up at the bright and endless stars as he curls his arm to gently run his fingers through Ian’s coppery red hair, “ _Fuck I love you_ ” he whispers, thoughts turning to words in an instant.

A brief moment later, and he hears the sincere return that warms his heart endlessly, “I love you too, Mickey”.


	12. The Grand Howler

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Old Western Slang:  
> unwound= a horse that starts bucking  
> barking at a knot= pointless  
> Calico queen/lady of the night= prostitute   
> big pasture= jail  
>    
> *enjoy the gif  
> *Fic is nearing the end but not quite there yet obviously :) chapter number is an estimate at this point

**Wild Country**

**Near to Nevada-Oregon Border**

****

****

 “Easy on the injured cheek” Mickey groans, his pale forehead creasing in pleasure as Ian continues to plow into him with his knees planted firmly in the dirt, and exploring hands arching out over his lover’s smooth back.

But he knows Mickey’s muscular body like the back of his own hand, knows how to get him to absolutely fold. And he can tell Mickey’s just talking plain nonsense now, as he’s pushing back harder into each thrust throughout his complaining.

“Nah, you like it like this Mick” he whispers, watching the sweat roll down his partner’s spine in a perfect bead. He swipes it away with his thumb.

“Fuck you” Mickey gasps out, but there’s no venom in his words, just pure unadulterated pleasure as he reaches down with his own fist to grasp and tug at himself desperately. Ian quickly rearranges himself behind him to go harder, recognizing the tell-tale signs that his partner is about to finish. Each tight constriction from Mickey’s reflexive muscles down his entire thick length is pushing him towards the brink as well, and he knows he won’t last much longer.  

Mickey swears the entire time his load shoots out into the gritty dirt beneath himself, shoulders bending and back arching. At the same time, Ian pulls out of him to finish, splattering warm whiteness across his lover’s firm cheeks while he bites his lip and groans.

He’s still in absolute bliss when Mickey turns around and frowns at him, arching an eyebrow at what he’s done.

“Why you gotta make a goddamn mess everywhere?”

Ian laughs breathlessly, “I love this ass”.

He grips one cheek firmly with a large hand as if to emphasize his point, laughing again when Mickey slaps his hand away and then gets up from his hands and knees.

They get dressed again leisurely after having taken a rather lengthy break for what was supposed to just be a midday meal, but in the end ended up feeding a very kind of different hunger, and Mickey unropes Diablo from the nearby tree first, unroping Ian’s horse last, who Ian had since named Shiloh.

The determined bounty hunter had spent the better part of the last several days helping him to finish breaking the young horse, who once mostly tamed, was generally a much quieter steed than Diablo, the ever-energetic though loyal Mustang.

Initially, Shiloh still had a tendency to become unwound, hence the sore ass Mickey was complaining of. It had been several days since Shiloh dumped either rider now though, but they did keep the saddle and bridle on him anyways, leaving Mickey to ride Diablo bareback or double up with Ian.

Ian himself was slowly growing quite fond of the horse Mickey had captured for him, of his beautiful ebony coat, and his soft and gentle snorts when Ian ran his hands down over his long and elegant nose.

All in all, the cowboy was happy. Content and with joy in his heart, he listens to the steady and rhythmic clopping of hooves against hard and dry earth that’s become so familiar to him as they leave, he swears he can hear it in his dreams.

Mickey of course rides close to his side, once again off into the great unknowns of the American Frontier.

More often than not, they rode through badlands and uninhabited wilderness, but a few hours later they see a medium sized town appearing in the distance, and the promise of fresh supplies and a stiff drink is too tempting to pass up.

“You think its safe?” Ian asks dubiously, Shiloh shifting nervously as he pulls up on the horse’s reigns.

Mickey shrugs as he squints into the distance, his blue eyes narrowed to improve his vision. “I reckon we’re far enough now…but I’m gonna go check it out first. Wait here” he says firmly.

Ian wants to argue, but the hard look Mickey gives him tells him it would be like barking at a knot. Waste of time with that man.

He waits patiently as he can with Shiloh, watching Diablo and Mickey eventually disappear past the town’s gate, and about twenty minutes later he’s damn near relieved to see Mickey return, his partner looking quite pleased as he pulls up with Diablo’s dark tail swishing side to side.

Mickey spits into the dirt with a grin, “Not a single wanted poster with your face or mine. Come on cowboy, lets get that horse of yours his own saddle”.

**The Town of Grand Howl**

Make no mistake, the two wary travellers still made no effort to draw attention to themselves as they entered the frontier town’s gates, although in Ian’s mind, it should have been hard for a man as captivating as Mickey not to draw eyes.

However, Mickey would have said the exact same thing about him.

They casually join the mild hustle and bustle of the town’s streets, weaving their horses past and through the women carrying full baskets of fresh vegetables, the children running about and playing their games in the streets, and the men smoking their pipes or cigars outside, and continue on towards a tack shop that they firmly tie their horses outside of.

The man inside the tack shop is wearing a worn leather apron, creased and crinkled from years of use, and he looks up at them through bushy white eyebrows as they come inside.

“Well hello there”.

“Howdy” Ian answers, nodding politely and not missing the amused grin on Mickey’s face. God dammit if he didn’t get a kick out of everything Ian said that linked him to his past as a cowboy. “We need a set of tack for the black stallion out there” he says, jabbing an unmarked thumb behind himself at Shiloh through the open doorframe.

The man shifts his spectacles, “Beautiful creature ain’t he?” he comments as he walks outside with the two of them to get a closer look at the horse he’s outfitting.

“Standard tack will fit him fine, you looking for brand new or is second hand alright?”

Mickey glances over at Ian like he might actually give a damn, who tries not to roll his eyes at the question. “Of course its alright” he answers immediately, nodding his head agreeably at the leather saddle the man returns to lift off a rack for him. Spent his whole life acquainted with second hand, wasn’t about to get pompous now.

Mickey carries the heavy thing in his arms out towards Shiloh, while Ian removes Diablo’s riding equipment from his back and mouth for the switch.  

The old man watches them work together patiently, making sure all the pieces of tack are fitted comfortably on each horse before they buy anything. With his arms crossed and a smile on his whiskered face the shopkeeper says, “You two seem like you’ve known each other for a very long time”.

Ian turns at the comment, “Us or the horses?”

“The two of yah”.

Ian doesn’t know what to say, but Mickey turns to eye the old man, blue eyes sweeping over him as he judges whether he’s someone sincere or not. If there is such a test, the man passes it.

Mickey looks down at the ground, his normally somewhat cocky voice growing softer as he answers, “We’re partners. Family”.

 _Partners. Family._ Ian would very much like to take Mickey’s hand in this moment and hold it, but then of course it would be clear that Mickey didn’t mean partners in the typical sense, business, traveling, or otherwise.

No, this was a well kept secret of their own. He’d just have to show Mickey his appreciation later, in private.

“That’s about all we have in this world” the old man answers, nodding kindly.

“How much we owe you?” Mickey asks, taking out a handful of the crumpled bills they had stolen from the bank back in Proudbranch. Ian smiles at the memory of their heist, such a heart pounding experience, he was sure he would remember it until he was old and grey.

Spectacled eyes appraise the tack resting on Shiloh, “Oh…let’s see. How about, twenty for everything?”

“Twenty?” Mickey raises an eyebrow at the man, and even Ian knows he’s undercharging them. Mickey doesn’t accept it however, “Listen, appreciate what you’re doing, but I settle my debts. Here’s thirty”.

“It’s used tack” the old man protests, but Mickey still shakes his head, thrusting the bills out towards him and waving them impatiently.

Finally the old man takes the payment, and nods his head in appreciation while Ian and Mickey lead their horses away from the tack shop with a thanks and eventually tie them outside of the town’s saloon. They have to buy some supplies first, but the general store is just across the street, so they head over there first to purchase some items they had been running low on.

Pemmican, dried fruit, matches, tobacco, some tins of beans and vegetables, and cowboy coffee grounds. All things to keep them going on the trail.

It feels almost strange to be milling around a busy general store with the bounty hunter by his side, Ian muses, as they’ve spent so many months with no company but each other, no buildings or even walls in sight.

But now here they are, no different than anybody else. Except perhaps a little dirtier than most, but no one’s giving them any lingering looks. It’s nothing unseen for a bachelor in these parts.

After passing over a few smaller bills to the general store clerk in payment, they pack their new supplies into their horses saddle bags, tightening the straps to keep everything packed in neatly.

Then Mickey turns with a smile towards Ian, raising a dark eyebrow in interest, “You ready for a drink cowboy? Jesus Christ I’m parched”.

“Not for water though” Ian laughs.

“Fuck no”.

They pass through the batwing doors of the town’s apparent saloon, _Lucifer’s Watering Hole_ , and while Ian pauses for a moment to look at a painting of Kansas fields by the doorway, Mickey continues on right towards the bar.

The wooden floor beneath his worn leather boots feels like home as he walks up to the counter, tipping his hat at the bar dog and dropping a dime. Pulling himself onto the bar stool, he winces slightly, his ass still pretty damn sore from both the horse dumping him so many times over the past few days and Ian‘s-

“What’s your predicament? You look like you could use something potent, friend” the bar tender says with a broken-toothed smile, while wiping a dirty glass down between his hands.

“Yeah, uh…just sore. Take a gut warmer” he grunts, while at the same Ian takes a seat beside him, with a small amused smile and a request for a glass of bourbon.

The bar tender pours out their drinks generously, sliding them across the counter towards each man’s hand without spilling a single drop.

The saloon is growing loud and boisterous now, filling up with both regular and new patrons and ladies looking to serve them as the daylight fades. Ian is enjoying his glass of bourbon just fine, but he’s never been a man to rely too much on drink, and he grins at the look of almost sinful pleasure on Mickey’s face as he takes his first sip of his whiskey after some time without.

Mickey notices his look and narrows his eyes towards him but doesn’t saying anything, the faintest hint of a smile forming on his well shaped lips as he lifts the glass and downs it, before wordlessly holding it out towards the bartender for another.

The second one goes a little more slowly. He swirls the dark amber liquid in the glass before each drink he takes, and then Ian is on his second too when one of the girls from the upstairs tavern finally approaches them.

At least, that’s what they both assume at first. That she’s some Calico queen looking for a dollar. But as she pauses beside Mickey at the counter and confidently eyes him, Ian notices she’s not quite like the other ladies of the night.

She’s dressed rather proper like, though the look in her blue-green eyes is anything but.

“I need a word with you” she says firmly, and without even glancing over towards her Mickey just raises a dark eyebrow in annoyance, taking another drink.

“Not my type sweetheart”.

Frowning at Mickey’s bluntness, she glances over towards Ian, who quickly returns to his own glass. He’s not getting involved this time.

She taps her foot impatiently. “I said, I need a word with you. I’m not leaving til you do”.

Shit. Ian’s really hoping this girl is going to take the hint and back off before either of them make a scene. It’s not like Mickey to be that stupid but God knows what this girl is capable of.

“Here’s what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna turn right around and find some other sap to spin for a dollar, got it?” Mickey growls lowly, his patience with the girl quickly ebbing as his eyebrows raise to new levels of harshness. 

“No, I think you’ll hear me out” she says stubbornly, raising a perfectly groomed blonde eyebrow back.

“You do, do yah?” Mickey finally laughs harshly, still brushing her off as he dips into his drink again. But Ian can’t help but notice the look on this girl’s face, and its making him uneasy. She’s not backing down in the goddamn slightest, and if Mickey would just look at how intently she’s-

The girl leans in closely, her light blonde hair bouncing on her shoulders as she whispers harshly by his ear, just loud enough for only the three of them to hear.

“Yes I do. Because if you don’t, you’ll end up in the big pasture… Mad Mick Milkovich. You and your friend Ian Gallagher here”.


	13. A Spoke in The Wheel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Old Western Slang (not new ones) :)
> 
> yack~ idiot  
> up stakes~ flee, take off

**Lucifer’s Watering Hole**

**Grand Howl, Nevada**

Both men feel their chests immediately constrict in a sickly sort of panic, their hearts starting to pound harder the very moment the blonde drops their real names in a harsh and low whisper to catch their attention for real.

And for God’s sake neither of them can even deny her allegations of their identification, not without drawing attention to themselves from the rest of the saloon that would surely one way or another end in their demise.

She has them in a tight snare and she knows it.

“I…”

Mickey starts to sputter, seeing Ian’s green and panic-stricken eyes across from himself, his first reaction is to _fix this_ , make it okay. But he doesn’t know how, and glancing back and forth between each other furtively, they both fucking know it.

The blonde purses her lips, following their quick moving eyes as they continue to regard each other, breathing lowly.

Somehow, with even a fucking gun, this young woman is the greatest problem they’ve come across, outlaws and officers be damned.

She clears her throat, “How about you two fine gentlemen come outside with me? I’d like to have that word now. And if you act civil I won’t need to go opening my mouth, now will I?” she says this last part in a quiet whisper, keeping it once again between the three of them.

“No Mam” Ian immediately answers, and after a quick elbow jab at Mickey to encourage him to comply as well, the bounty hunter mumbles in kind.

“No Mam”.

Following the young woman outside rather quickly, Mickey still hisses at her as soon as they step out as a group of three into the darkening street, currently emptying of its daylight occupants.

“Who the hell are you anyways?”

“Karen. Karen Jackson. Anyhow, we need to speak in private, and we’ll go to my farmhouse to do so. It’s not far from here. Tie your horses to the back of this here wagon, and be quick about it”.

Mickey immediately starts to open his mean mouth, looking ready to spit an insult or at least another argument, but Ian shoves him just hard enough to get his attention as he gets to work doing exactly what she said.

“Just fucking do it Mick. You think we have any options here? It’s get lynched or do what she fucking says, and hope we don’t anyways”.

Miss Jackson herself appears ready to leave in a haste, so after tying the horses proper Ian quickly climbs into the wagon her own is drawing, Mickey reluctantly pulling himself up to sit beside him in the front of the wagon while the woman sits perched and alert in the back, directing them without difficulty.

“You both will lead my horse down this same road until I say otherwise. Don’t you dare try anything foolish, or I will shoot you without a moment’s hesitation” she says firmly.

“Jesus Christ” Mickey groans, glancing over his shoulder as the feisty blonde reveals a Sharp’s Carbine she’d apparently kept hidden beneath a pile of blankets, and is now subtly training on them.

“Shut up and move” she commands, and with a sigh and a whistle, Ian cracks the reigns against her gray horse’s back, bringing the farm wagon to a steady roll. It soon becomes apparent that Miss Jackson won’t let them speak a word to each other or herself, and makes them shut up any time either of them even try, so eventually they give up.

After thirty or so minutes they are pulling up in front of small and delicate looking farmhouse, and with that she commands them, now openly aiming the Carbine at the two of them while she keeps a safe distance to keep herself from being disarmed, to confine the horses in the barn before entering her house.

“You don’t have to keep that on us” Ian says as they walk inside the farmhouse, his arms starting to get fucking sore from holding them in the air so much since they left what she apparently felt was the relative safety of the wagon, “I know you think you know who we are, but you don’t know what we’ve done”.

“I don’t care what you done” she sniffs, and its almost hard not to laugh at her while she’s still aiming the large gun towards them, her blonde hair starting to frizz while she gets more and more agitated.

Unlike Mickey’s pistol toting sister, Miss Jackson doesn’t make an entirely convincing Calamity Jane.

“How the hell do you know who we are?” Mickey finally demands, now that no-talking rule appears to be over with, “Ain’t nobody else did out here”.

She finally smiles, her lively eyes dancing as she regards the two of them. “That’s because I’m not from here. See, I used to make a living back in Arizona doing sketches, until my son of a bitch husband moved us out to this hillbilly town in the middle of nowhere last week”.

“You…did our wanted sketches?” Ian asks slowly, trying to piece two and two together. It made sense that an artist wouldn’t forget their faces so easily, but of all the damned luck how did she manage to find them here? Literally on the opposite end of the state?

She nods her confirmation to the question, eyes seeming amused.

“You been lookin for us?” Mickey demands again, getting more and more agitated himself while Ian frankly just feels dumbstruck. He’s not sure if he’s even been in a more strange and unexpected situation.

Except for perhaps falling in love and running away with his captor…

“Don’t flatter yourself. I thought I recognized you in town earlier today, so I went home to look at my sketches. I keep a copy of each one. And then I knew I was right, so I went back to town looking for the two of you”.

“Why though?” Ian asks quietly, and Mickey finally looks over at him, his forehead creasing in concern at the situation he clearly doesn’t understand either. She doesn’t appear to want to turn them in, and most people would consider taking two outlaws hostage like this to be a deadly risk.

So why would she?

“It’s gonna be okay cowboy” Mickey murmurs in an attempt to be reassuring, but Karen doesn’t miss that quiet comment. She smiles again, an odd one, and backs away to grab a piece of paper from the scattered pile on her worn out kitchen table. She extends it out towards them, and Ian takes it gingerly.

“I take it that description is correct?” she asks primly.

They both stare at the poster.

****

**_WANTED: Ian Clayton Gallagher & ‘Mad’ Mick Milkovich_ **

**Dead or Alive**

For: attempted rape, murder, and possible theft. Last spotted in Rushwater, Nevada, where Milkovich broke Gallagher out of sheriff custody. The two appear to work together and may have a relationship of a sinful nature.

**REWARD: $750** for Gallagher, **$900** for Milkovich.

 

“Not exactly correct, no. And my price went up” Ian mutters, before sliding a finger over to Mickey’s significantly higher one, “Should I be offended?”

“It’s because I’m a damn bounty hunter” Mickey growls, not finding the joke funny in the slightest, his blue eyes appear to be focused more on the sketch of him and Ian than the actual words on the parchment.

“Exactly” Miss Jackson nods. “And now you’ll be putting down a man for me, free of charge”.

“Wait, that’s why you brought us here? You aren’t going to turn us in?” Ian asks, his chest flooding with sudden hope.

She shakes her head, “If you do this for me as agreed upon, I will never breathe a word of your existence in this town. I don’t want his death being linked back to myself”.

Ian understands now that he has no value in her mind. Mickey was her target and he was brought along simply to keep the bounty hunter in line. But his life was safe as long as Mickey’s was.

He turns to Mickey, “Do it Mick”.

Mickey frowns in hesitation, chewing the inside of his cheek for a moment as he considers the logistics of the offer, “Who is it?”

“My husband”.

They both look up from the paper and stare at her.

“He moved me up here away from everything I knew and within a week was spending nights over at Miss Cecelia’s. That’s where he is now. When he leaves to come home in the morning, I want you to shoot him dead”.

“Jesus Christ” Mickey groans, “So he’s banging someone else. Get over it”.

Her scowl returns with a vengeance and Ian practically strangles his lover, “Shut up you yack!” he hisses, before clearing his throat and saying in a much politer tone, “Karen, Miss Jackson, it’ll be taken care of. As long as you keep your word”.

“I have to, for my own good. And just so you know, he beats me too” she says, eyeing Mickey warily, “Under my dress where no one will see it in town”.

The bounty hunter pauses, leaving a short moment before he finally answers in agreement, his feelings on the matter of a woman being beaten more than clear. “We’ll do it. But…I want you to throw something else into the deal”.

She raises her blonde eyebrows, “Besides your life?”

Mickey frowns at her but nods anyways, shrugging a little as he hands the _WANTED_ poster back to her. “I want you to draw this. Again. Without any of the ‘wanted’ bullshit. Just…just the two of us”.

“So it’s true then, the two of you” she states, plainly.

“Ain’t nothing sinful about it” Ian says a little defensively, but either way, she doesn’t seem to care, and Mickey has nothing else to say about it either.

“You can sleep in the barn tonight” she says firmly, “Before dawn, you will leave and head west until you pass a grouping of white pines. Beyond that, there’s a farmhouse behind a small hill. Won’t take you more than a half hour’s time to get there on your horses. Hide and wait for him to come towards you at the hill…he takes the same route here every morning he’s away… and shoot him dead once he’s close enough. Then we can all forget this ever happened”.

“And you will then…do what exactly?” Mickey questions, his overall distaste of the plan still rather evident. Ian himself didn’t exactly find it shocking, he could picture his sister Fiona doing the same thing if a man ever shamed her that way.

She finally laughs, “Play the grieving widow and then find myself a new husband. One that ain’t a piece of shit”.

-

The dry hay is somewhat scratchy beneath Ian’s clothing as he settles down into it some more, appreciating the cushioning the barn provides but missing the texture of the soft grass he was now accustomed to sleeping on.

He’s been trying to for a quarter of an hour already, because Mickey said they should take shifts resting until dawn, but he’s getting absolutely nowhere.

He props himself up on his elbows and looks over towards the barn doors, where Mickey is standing and leaning in the doorway, using the full moon’s light to keep looking at Karen’s new sketch that he had requested as part of their deal.  

She was a talented artist, Ian could admit that. And Mickey seemed captured by the image of the two of them together, especially now that instead of just faces, they were drawn mid chest up, arms around each others shoulder, and sporting smiles they had in real life when she asked them to stand still for reference.

“Mickey?” he says softly.

The bounty hunter turns to look over at him, and seeing he is still wide awake, carefully folds the drawing and tucks it into his breast pocket beneath his jacket before coming over to him. “What’s up cowboy?”

He hesitates for a moment before he asks, feeling he already knows the answer, “I can’t sleep. Are you sure we shouldn’t just up stakes?”

Mickey shakes his head, “No. Too risky. She’ll blab just to fucking spite us if we don’t do it and we’re too close to Oregon for another sighting. It could follow us to Mt. Hood. But if you ain’t comfortable killing him, you don’t have to do a thing. I can come get you after”.

Ian shakes his head, “I don’t care about killing him. I just don’t like that we could be seen again. He probably saw her sketches too. What if he gets away?” he worries.

Mickey lowers himself into the hay beside him, leaning over to kiss Ian’s forehead gently to reassure him with a promise.

“Nobody gets away from Mad Mick”.  


	14. Our Freedom in Sight

****

**Karen Jackson’s Farm,**

**Grand Howl Nevada**

“Ian, it’s time to go”.

Mickey’s words reach into Ian’s blurry dreams, half way between the waking world and the sleeping one, he comes to slowly. Protected nicely from the frontier’s elements by the weather proofed barn, he fell into a deeper slumber than usual when he finally found it.

Opening his green eyes and blinking, he sees it’s still somewhat dark out, the sky just beginning to lighten, with the air damp and cool as it is in the earliest hours of the morning.

“You didn’t wake me up for the last shift” he mumbles, rubbing his knuckles against his weary eyes as he starts to get up from his place in the hay, while moving Mickey’s jacket away from his body at the same time. The bounty hunter must have covered him with it during the night to keep him warm.

“You looked really tired” Mickey answers, clearly wide awake, and Ian sees he already got their horses ready to go as well so he could sleep in.

He would never understand how the man functioned so well on so little sleep.

“I love you” he murmurs, coming over to kiss Mickey on the cheek tiredly before they both walk out of the barn side by side, leading their quiet horses onto the grass before they climb up into their saddles.

“I love you too cowboy” Mickey answers, while mulling over heavy thoughts about the day’s grim task in his mind.

He’s put down many a man before in his career, but he really only had ever considered himself in the past, and now he has Ian’s safety to worry about as well.

Something he was accustomed to from their harrowing journey towards freedom alone, but also something he preferred to avoid whenever possible.

He slings the ’66 Winchester over his shoulder that Miss Jackson had told him he could use the night before because it had a better range than his personal Colt. She felt that they could abandon the weapon with her husband’s body once he was dead, and the sheriff would assume he was ambushed and killed with his own weapon, a logic Mickey agreed with.

At a gentle trot’s pace, they head west across the empty land until they see the cluster of white pines Karen had mentioned as a land marker, using them to continue onwards towards the hill until they finally spy the farmhouse in the distance.

“Okay, let’s leave the horses here. We don’t want him to see them and get a head’s up or anything” Mickey prompts, nudging Diablo to a full stop before sliding down from his side, “Tie Shiloh to him, just in case he’s inclined to bolt otherwise”.

Ian does as he’s told, feeling more alert now that the crisp air has been filling his lungs for the past half hour or so, and the sky is getting lighter and lighter as well.

This morning has a strange nature to it he thinks, energizing somehow, though he can’t quite put his finger on that at first.

He follows Mickey over to the arch of the small hill, taking his lead and lying down flat on his belly just before the peak, close enough to watch the farmhouse in the distance. “Little flatter” Mickey prompts, angling the Winchester against the ground and squinting at it’s trajectory.

After shifting himself against the ground even more, and breathing in the damp and earthy smelling grass beneath his nose deeply, Ian hears Mickey click his tongue.

“That’s good”.

“Okay” Ian answers, still staring at the farmhouse.

Never a dull moment when you chose a bounty hunter to be your life partner, he thinks.

Life partner…that’s what he was, wasn’t he? Escaping across the American Frontier with him, giving it all up to have a future in Oregon together. What else could that mean?

Mickey clears his throat, interrupting Ian’s thoughts but settling on the flighty feeling he’d been having in his stomach all the morning.

“After this...after this we’re going home cowboy. If all goes well, should be reaching Oregon borders by nightfall”.

“And then another week or so until Mt. Hood?” Ian asks hopefully, Mickey looking away from the farmhouse for just a moment to glance over at him.

“Or so” he answers, with a knowing smile. Ian doesn’t know for sure, but he believes Mickey is picturing their new life together in his mind, seeing the images, just as he is.

He can’t wait to begin that life.

“I think someone’s coming outside” he whispers, squinting towards the farmhouse again and coming back into focus of their current situation.

Mickey sniffs and closes one eye, watching the place Ian had subtly pointed towards. “Yup that’s him” he answers, “He’s gotta be a lot closer though”.

They both silently watch him leave the farmhouse, grey woollen jacket slung over his shoulder as he staggers slightly towards their general direction, singing like a lark.

“He’s roostered” Ian whispers, shaking his head and drumming his fingers against the grass in anticipation. At least the guy would die happy, he figures. There’s worse ways to go. 

“That’s fine” Mickey whispers back, pushing his shoulders back slightly as he turns the rifle slightly to accommodate the man’s now awkward and diagonal path towards them, “I’ll tell you when I’m gonna shoot, then we’re gonna make a run for the horses just in case the whore he’s banging hears the shot”.

Ian snorts at the disapproval in his tone, “Thought you said Karen was overreacting?”

Mickey glances towards him, one dark eyebrow raised. “Stick your dick somewhere it don’t belong and I’ll show you overreacting”.

They both laugh softly against the grass, Ian shaking his head in denial that he would ever do such a thing. He’d found a man that would satisfy him for a lifetime and then some, there was no reason to ever go looking elsewhere.

“Okay” Mickey suddenly hisses, lifting the gun slightly, “Less than 100 yards. Cover your ears”.

“What about yours?” Ian worries.

“Cover your fuckin ears!”

Ian does as he’s told, but he still hears the blast that goes off right beside him, much louder than the handguns he’s gotten rather used to. And he watches as the man clutches at what looks like his beard in confusion, but then Ian sees the red on his hand as he pulls it away, and realizes Mickey had shot him in the neck.

“I missed!” Mickey groans, grabbing at the side of his head and wiggling his finger in his ear to clear the ringing now plaguing him, “Meant to kill ‘im first shot!”

Ian knows what he means. There’s no need to give him a painful death, but Mickey is too distracted to fire a second shot right away, still trying to regain his full hearing.

“Give me that!”

He wrestles the Winchester away from Mickey’s arms, and stands up, aiming the gun towards the man as he turns towards him in confusion, falling to his knees and dying, but not fast enough. Pressing the butt of the rifle into his shoulder, Ian pulls the trigger and fires another loud blast, the man falling stone dead at the second shot now lodged in his chest.

“Nice shot Gallagher!” Mickey yells, and with that Ian flings the gun towards the body, the two of them running for their waiting horses without waiting to see if Miss Cecilia came running out of the nearby farmhouse to see what all the ruckus was about.

With a solid leap and kick to their horse’s sides the second Ian undoes the knot tying them together loose, they rear in the dust and take off in the opposite direction of the farmhouse, the early daylight high and bright now.

“That Karen better keep her word!” Ian yells over the thundering of their horse’s hooves, his heart pounding high in his chest as they gallop freely along the landscape, getting further and further away from Grand Howl and its troublesome residents.

“She will!” Mickey calls back, feeling just as relieved. They had held up their end of the deal, and now that her husband was dead, Karen couldn’t say much about it, or it may look suspicious. Especially to those who might know she had a bone to pick with her husband.

There was nothing holding them here any longer, and with saddlebags full of supplies and a heart full of hope, he was ready for the last stretch of their journey.

-

**The Pueblo Mountain Range**

Out of what seems like nowhere, Mickey clicks his tongue sharply, pullinh Diablo’s reigns back and thus bringing him to a rather sudden stop.

It’s getting darker out now as evening falls steadily over their surrounding landscape, but he had promised Ian he would get him to Oregon by nightfall, and he intended on keeping that promise. Noticing his partner’s sudden halt, Ian also signals for Shiloh to cease walking, and after a moment of silence in an attempt to appear patient he can’t help himself any longer.

“Are we in Oregon?” he asks excitedly, looking around himself.

Mickey stays quiet for a moment longer, his head cocked slightly, almost like a hound dog would when its listening very intently for something.

Finally, he answers. “I don’t know, never been this fucking far out before. But from what I remember maps wise… well, the mountain range looks like it’s been getting thicker, you notice that?”

Ian looks over towards the near east where he’s pointing, where the stunning mountains have been by all appearances steadily growing in size and range for the past few hours, and nods his head.

Mickey continues, “Right. And there’s supposed to be a small stream, somewhere just west of the mountains, where we are, that doesn’t reach Nevada. If we find the stream, we’re in Oregon for certain. I thought maybe I heard it running. Should have hit it by now”.

Ian strains his ears desperately, but he can’t say he hears running water. He feels a sick sense of doubt himself, but Mickey seems fairly sure of their location… so he turns Shiloh to the right.

“Let’s go a little further west. See if it’s there”.

The bounty hunter nods, clicking his tongue a bit louder to urge their horses on faster. If it gets too dark, they’ll have to stop and make camp for the night until sunrise. It wouldn’t be safe or wise travelling this unfamiliar land otherwise, and it’s getting closer and closer to that point.

But to his relief Ian is soon straining his ears as well, apparently almost in tears he’s so damn happy as he shouts, “I hear it! I hear the stream!” Without thinking twice, he gives Shiloh an eager kick, bounding ahead and whooping in the saddle with joy as he breaks through the trees and almost immediately encounters the precious stream, running quiet but strong.

After seeing his partner absolutely light up with hope, and hearing the emotion in his voice as he for sure heard the telltale stream, Mickey’s own throat feels thick as he kicks Diablo to go after them.

Breaking through the trees just moments after Ian’s, the two horses gallop alongside the stream with their riders until it eventually begins to taper off among rocks, and night really begins to overcome them.

Breathless as they pull to a stop, Ian quickly jumps down lithely from Shiloh’s back, immediately turning around and holding out his arms, gesturing for Mickey to jump down towards him.

With a shy laugh and a shake of his dark head, like he’s in disbelief of it himself, Mickey half jumps into Ian’s waiting arms, who immediately wraps them around his back, pulling Mickey in close against his body as he practically shakes with joy.

He presses his lips against Mickey’s, kissing him with so much emotion, so much love, they both almost tear up, breathing in deeply as their hands roam over each other’s arms.

They weren’t at their final destination yet, but they were in the state that would be their new home, hopefully for the rest of their lives. The chances that anyone out here would ever know them again was slim to none, and the relief between them is palpable.

“I’m free. You’re free. You made us free” Ian whispers against his face, pressing his sweaty forehead against his, and then Mickey suddenly realizes how scared, how worried Ian had been all along that they wouldn’t make it this far, that something would stop them along the way.

He holds the side of Ian’s face to ground him, kissing him repeatedly as he murmurs in absolute truth, “No Ian… you made me free. And now we’re gonna be free together”.


	15. Weyerhaeuser

**The Weyerhaeuser Settlement**

**Mt. Hood Oregon**

The two men could barely keep the inquisitive smiles off their slightly dirt smudged faces as they finally rode into the settlement that would now be a part of their new home, their horse’s tails swishing side to side contentedly, as if they too knew that their long and difficult journey was coming to a triumphant end.

Weyerhaeuser was not a true frontier town in a sense, but rather a much-needed settlement hastily thrown up over the past year as the influx of logging men arriving in the area to work for Weyerhaeuser’s Timber Company created a viable opportunity for small business people as well; saloon owners, general store shopkeepers, blacksmiths and more.

Named after one of the wealthiest men in the region, as his timber company dominated most of the economy, the town of Weyerhaeuser itself was composed of mostly young men, all arriving from across the entire West to make a living in one of the most successful new careers since the California gold rush, and one that was less of a gamble.

Mickey and Ian truly didn’t seem to stand out at all among all the other men, and felt a sense of peace and comradery coming over them almost as soon as they rode past the wooden sign hammered into the ground just outside of the settlement announcing its name.

Looking over at the tall red-haired man riding beside him, Mickey’s eyes drift affectionately across Ian’s face, which is slightly flushed from both the afternoon sunshine and the last stretch of their ride. “You look like you could use a drink” he comments.

Ian grins back at him, tugging at Shiloh’s leather reigns to stop him from going any further as they reach the town’s obvious drinking hole, named by another sign as the ‘Wolf’s Head Saloon’. He knows few things that Mickey enjoys as much as a drink at the end of the day.

“So do you. Let’s start our new life here right Mick”.

They slide down evenly from their tired horses’ backs and tie them up alongside the other steeds tethered beside a water trough to the waiting post for a rest, taking their sweet time for the first time in a long time with the knots before they head into the Wolf’s Head saloon, side by side and aching for a drink.

It’s lively and busy inside the packed saloon, and a beautiful dark-skinned woman is standing behind the bar’s counter as they enter, staring at the man who’s also leaning over the counter beside her as he’s trying to explain how to properly skin a bear to two men laughing their asses off on their bar stools in front him.

“Never mind, you don’t get it” he eventually gripes, frowning at them in annoyance before he turns to the woman in disappointment, “And Veronica, you could back me up on this. You saw me do it”.

“I watched you make a damn mess is what I did” she responds, looking rather unimpressed as she heads down the counter’s length to refill another man’s glass with some dark amber liquid, “Hair everywhere”.

The man shakes his head impatiently but then looks up politely as Mickey and Ian choose two free stools along the counter side in front of him, both of them already feeling amused by whatever the hell they walked in on. This settlement felt good… vibrant and young and full of hope and opportunity, just like the people in it.

“Hey there, what can I get you two?” the bartender asks, his tone already friendly again. Ian clears his throat and smiles, “Bourbon please, and a clean whiskey for my partner here”. As the drinks are passed over he adds, “We just arrived here. Looking for some work with Weyerhaeuser’s Timber Company. You know where we might find him?”

The man looks up at them again, his longer dark hair swinging slightly around his ears as he glances from one man to the other, “Didn’t think you’d been here before. I see most people around here often enough to remember them by. Name’s Kevin, and the pretty lady over there is my wife, Veronica”.

Mickey and Ian both reach over the counter to accept the handshakes he offers, and tip their Stetson hats towards the woman he had gestured towards, who nods her head back politely as she wipes down a glass. “My name is Ian, and this is Mickey” Ian adds, jerking a thumb towards Mickey as he takes another gulp of his whiskey, “Pleased to make your acquaintance Kevin”.

The bar tender smiles at them before he continues, “Just call me Kev. As to your question, Weyerhaeuser has an office just down the road, and he’ll take just about anyone he can get to cut those trees down fast enough for the orders comin in across the west. You two look strong enough, so I’m sure you’ll be hired on without much trouble”.

Mickey nods his head in response to the answer, and Ian can plainly see the mild relief crossing over his partner’s pale face as they are met with only friendliness in the bartender’s tone. They had briefly considered changing their names before they arrived here, but Mickey’s argument was that if anyone this far out knew of them anyways, it wouldn’t help much just changing their names. Luckily, their last stretch of travel towards Mt. Hood from the Oregon border had been rather easy-going, and they both were falling in love with the lush landscape almost as fast as they had fallen for each other.

So as far as starting their new lives together went, they were eager as ever to start.

After finishing their hard drinks, just one apiece, Mickey pauses briefly before dropping an extra dime in payment for the bartender Kev, who takes the tip with an appreciative nod.

“Good to meet you” Mickey grunts, in his best attempt to be friendly in return, “I’m sure you’ll be seeing us around”.

Kev grins at the two of them, lifting his hand in a wave as they head for the door, “Of course. And fellas? Welcome to Weyerhaeuser”.

As they leave the saloon and walk down the travel flattened main street together, Ian bumps his shoulder up against Mickey’s purposefully, who turns to look at him, eyes traveling up and down over his body swiftly before he asks, “What?”

“Nothing” Ian grins with a playful shrug, “I’m just happy”. Mickey’s blue eyes search his own for a moment as they stop outside of the office marked with a clean sign, announcing it belongs to Mr. Weyerhaeuser himself. Mickey pauses before he lowers his voice and says sincerely before waving him into the building, “Cowboy, I’m gonna make sure you’re happy for the rest of your life. Come on”.

His chest fluttering with contentment, Ian steps inside the small office building after his partner, nodding in greeting at the young woman sitting up at front behind a nicely built desk, carved and ornate with an expensive looking fountain pen resting in her hand.

“Can I help you gentlemen?” she asks politely, pretty brown eyes flashing from one unfamiliar man to the next as she turns to a new piece of parchment, one Ian can see is covered with order numbers. “We’d like to speak to Mr. Weyerhaeuser regarding finding some work. We just arrived here in Mt. Hood” Mickey answers, resting his tattooed hands on his hips.

Before she has a chance to respond to his statement, they hear someone coming out of the back room, and from the looks of it, he’s the man they are looking for. He seems stately and intelligent, with a bowler hat resting on his head, and his dark mustache properly trimmed. Clearly a man of success, by all Western standards.

“Welcome to the town, gentlemen. Can I assume you are here looking for logging jobs?” Mr. Weyerhaeuser asks, as both of them remove their hats politely.

“Yes sir” they both answer, trying their best to make a good impression. It might not be second nature to Mickey, watching what he says and does so carefully, but he’s not a fool either, and he knows its important they get settled in well here.

It also doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel a bit like a kiss ass with all of the somewhat feigned politeness, but he can’t afford to fuck this up, not now. Ian deserved a new life, and Mickey had promised him that.

“Fantastic. You both look like strapping young men. Ever done logging before?” Mr. Weyerhaeuser asks, glancing them over.

“Well…not exactly” Ian admits in a bit of a mumble, but Mickey quickly speaks over him, “We’re fast learners sir. We’ll work dawn til dusk if we need to, we just really need jobs”.

The man laughs, “Not necessary, though I appreciate your enthusiasm. It’s rather simple work, but it _is_ grueling. The days start early. If you would still like to sign up over there with Miss Laurie, I can offer you $30 a month each. You can arrive here tomorrow morning at dawn, and the foreman will lead you towards our current site. I could use you both at processing”.

They both practically talk over each other as they rush forward in unison as well to shake his hand, thanking him for the opportunity.  

And within ten minutes, they are both new employees of the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company.

 

** Employee Name           Wage                  Signature               Site/Foreman  **

Mikhailo A. Milkovich    $30/mo.             _M. Milkovich_ Processing/Jenson

Ian C. Gallagher            $30/mo _.             I. C. Gallagher_ Processing/Jenson

 

“You may pick up your wages here every two weeks, or at the bank if you prefer” the secretary Miss Laurie explains after Mr. Weyerhaeuser bids them farewell to take care of other business, adding, “You said you just arrived here, are you looking for places to settle? Mr. Weyerhaeuser has some communal lodges built for new arrivals, generally you share the house with anywhere from two to six other men”.

Mickey tries to keep his face from showing exactly what he thinks about that offer. Ian and him have spent several months with absolute privacy and freedom in the middle of wild country, and neither of them are hankering to give that up so easily.

Even now, he can’t wait to be alone with Ian again. “No mam, we’ll be building our own shelter on the other side of the mountain there” he says firmly.

She seems surprised by their choice, “There’s free land closer. It would be at least an hour into work each day. No one else is settled out there either, if safety is a concern. There are bears and cougars in these parts you know”.

Ian tries not to laugh. Like he could be anywhere safer than with Mickey by his side. “I’m sure we’ll be fine” he smiles, “But thank you for your concern”.

-

“What do you think?” Mickey asks, stopping to wipe off his slightly sweaty brow as the two of them stand at the very top of the mountain they had chosen to settle alongside.

It was part of the landscape Weyerhaeuser would be leaving alone, instead clearing the trees southward, as the numerous mountains tended to be more problematic in terms of logging efficiently this way. An hour or so away from the rest of the population that tended to cluster more closely together, they knew they would have absolute privacy out here for years to come, and there were flat expanses of land between some of the mountains that were perfect for building on.

Ian stays absolutely silent in response to his question, his brow slightly furrowed as he looks out over the mountainside, at the other mountain peaks in the distance, at the sun setting and filtering through the trees.

Mickey waits a little while for an answer, and then shakes his head, a little disappointed after Ian still says nothing at all. Scouting slightly ahead of Ian, he had thought this place had it all as soon as he saw it.

He clears his throat, “Well we can choose a different spot if you don’t like it. It’s just this one sort of had everything we were looking for, I thought. We have a ton of land we can use just down there, a view like this to climb to, and there’s a river just over there. Like you wanted, remember?”

Ian finally looks over at him then, and its Mickey’s turn to frown with worry as he sees his lover’s face, how hard he’s clenching his jaw as he shakes his head a bit, green eyes shining.

“Hey, hey…what’s wrong cowboy?” Mickey asks in concern, reaching over to pull him towards him by the shoulders. He can’t imagine what would upset his partner like this now, but he’s worried Ian has suddenly changed his mind about the whole Oregon thing.

Ian pushes him away a bit so Mickey can see his face again as he gestures out towards everything laying out in front of them in apparent wonder, clearing his throat to speak more clearly, “Nothing’s wrong. It’s perfect! It’s just… well… I spent years while I was growing up expecting to spend so many more of them alone. I couldn’t have imagined a life this good for myself, and with you by my side? How did this all happen? How did I get so lucky?”

“You like it” Mickey states, trying to understand as Ian leaks a stray tear while at the same time he’s smiling. “I love it. I love you” Ian laughs wholeheartedly, reaching over to grab him and shake him a little playfully by the shoulders before he looks more serious again, “God, I love you so much Mickey” he whispers, his voice pure and filled with joy, Mickey’s heart lifts at the sound of it.

“I love you too cowboy” he murmurs, as the two of them wrap their arms around each other’s waists, leaning their heads together to watch as the sun goes down slowly.

-

The crickets seem especially loud that night, but every once and a while a loud snap from the warm fire interrupts their song, not that either man particularly notices.

They are much more focused on the sounds of each other…the ragged breathing, the sharp exhales, the small groans of pleasure that escape every so often from the two of them, unbidden.

With Ian’s arm wrapped over his side and splayed across his chest, Mickey knows he can feel how fast his full heart is beating, and he can feel Ian’s own heartbeat against his back too as his partner gently arches inside of him again and again, both of them knowing they have an early morning tomorrow, but unable to keep themselves from giving in to the incessant need to be close to each other in a way that was only theirs.

There’s nothing beneath their bodies but an old trail blanket Mickey had bought today before they left the town, but the grass out here is lush and tall, and it feels soft beneath it. Sweating, Mickey looks up at the dark night sky above them for a moment, gasping as Ian hits his spot at the exact same moment.

“Right there?” Ian murmurs in a low voice beside his ear, causing him to practically tremble. He nods his head, biting his bottom lip as Ian reangles himself for five or six final pushes, all it takes for him to finish with a loud sound that’s a mixture of a cry of pleasure and an exhale of bated breath.

“Ohhh, yes” Ian gasps in response, and then the familiar flood of fullness and warmth meets Mickey’s insides a moment later, while he shuts his eyes in one final flush of pleasure.

He pulls Ian’s hand to his mouth to kiss it once he’s done, turning slightly on the blanket to face him as they kiss, slowly and then once more again before they both nestle down into the blanket a little more for warmth.

“Hold on” Mickey whispers, reaching behind himself to grab for his wool jacket, Ian never once letting go of his hold around his waist.

“Come back here” he mumbles with a lazy smile, one that Mickey can’t help but grin at. “I was getting us a blanket you yack” he laughs softly, pulling it over his and Ian’s bodies and then pushing in closer against him so they are both covered by the jacket’s extra warmth.

Now that they are both quiet and satisfied, the sound of the wilderness surrounding them finally reaches their ears, and they both shut their eyes to enjoy it for a moment. The ballad of their freedom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will either be one or two more chapters after this, I'll see how it turns out when I write it :) Hopefully won't be too long of a wait but the interviews coming out from Noel/JW re Mickey's return are taking a bit of a toll on my creativity besides the tight schedule I'm stuck with right now. Thank you as always for reading and leaving feedback <3


	16. We Take Care of Each Other

**The Gallagher-Milkovich Camp**

**Mt. Hood, Oregon**

Long before the crack of dawn, Ian wakes up to the smell of fresh cowboy coffee being brewed over an early morning fire. He opens his green eyes and stretches like a cat, enjoying the comforting view of Mickey preparing their breakfast by the illuminating firepit a few feet away for a minute or two before he abandons the warm jacket Mickey had covered him with, and leaves to do his morning constitutionals in private.

As he hikes back towards his and Mickey’s little encampment once he’s done, he sees the bounty hunter lift a tin plate and hold it out towards him, and he lifts his ginger eyebrows eagerly at the sight of the steaming breakfast food. A deep sniff confirms his hopes.

“Bacon?” he asks joyously, immediately putting a delicious and salty piece into his mouth after he takes the plate and confirms it visually. “It’s our first day” Mickey grins in response, reaching back for their shared plate and taking a strip of bacon for himself before he reaches for a hot piece of potato next, “Gotta fuel up right?”

“Mhm” Ian agrees, swallowing down some of the hot coffee Mickey had prepared and then passed over, chewing on some of the invigorating grounds thoughtfully. He really has no idea what to expect for his first day as a logger, and normally that would be a little more worrisome, but since him and Mickey got assigned to the same site he assumes they’ll figure it out together.

Before long they are putting out their smoky camp fire and mounting their snorting and eager horses, the first inkling of daylight beginning to spread out across the endless Oregon sky above them as they make their way down the lush mountain and back down towards the Weyerhaeuser settlement, Ian whistling to himself the whole way.

As agreed upon the previous day, they arrive outside Weyerhaeuser’s town office right at dawn, and an impatient looking man is there waiting for them and two other new hires, the collected group riding together down towards their processing site for the next month or so. 

“Alright”, the foreman says over the considerable noise of working men, approaching Ian and Mickey after he directs the other two new hires off towards a group collectively dragging a massive felled tree with ropes.

After tying Diablo and Shiloh up at one of the posts, Ian and Mickey had been standing around awkwardly like two school children on their first day at the school house, waiting to be told what to do.

The foreman spits into the dirt, “Name’s Jenson. You must be Milkovich and Gallagher… and I don’t care who’s who” he adds, interrupting as Ian starts to point to himself in introduction, “Basically, each tree that comes through and is laid down needs to be stripped, with all the branches and whatnot coming off before you saw it down like those ones in that pile over there. I expect you to keep pace with everyone else working. You get an hour break around noon to eat, piss, do whatever you like. Here are your axes and saws men, and watch your hands. We don’t pay for no stupid accidents around here”.

Wordlessly, Mickey and Ian exchange a quick glance before they grab the processing tools that Jenson is offering out towards them. He’s certainly the no-nonsense type, and he immediately turns around to bark out some more orders to the movers before he turns back to them with a frown.

“Well get on now, that tree over there is yours. Soon as you done, the movers’ll bring you another one”.

“Yes sir” Mickey answers, his dark eyebrows rising in poorly hidden amusement as him and Ian trudge towards the giant tree Jenson had directed them towards.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to do their work, but it is _constant_ physical exertion, and by high noon the baking sun has them both sweating through their cotton shirts after hacking at the scratchy branches and bark for so long.

All Ian wants to do is lay down with his head in Mickey’s lap and sleep for their lunch break, but they join the rest of their group for lunch of course, eager to not stand out. Not surprisingly, the group of working men mostly want to talk about women, and at one point the loud and large blonde sitting next to Ian slaps him on the shoulder, bringing him into the conversation.

“What bout you Red, what you like?”

Ian glances around the rest of the group, half the men still eating, half casually resting in the grass, but all apparently waiting for his answer. What exactly had they been talking about? He had been zoned out, absentmindedly thinking about seeing Mickey stretched out and naked, the sight of his man sweating and working hard across from him earlier doing things to him that he couldn’t quit explain.

So what was the exact opposite of that? He clears his throat, “I uh…big breasts. Love em. Can’t get enough”.

Only Ian hears the sharp snort that comes out of Mickey’s nose in response, and he looks over to see the absolute amusement in his partner’s perfect blue eyes while most of the men loudly agree with him, with the odd few saying they prefer a petite figure in a woman, but anything’ll do. “Shut up” Ian grunts quietly at Mickey, who tries to hide his more than obvious smirk beneath his Stetson hat as he lowers his head to focus on his apple.

By the end of the workday, its likely safe to say that they are both accepted into their new working crew, a few of the men already politely inviting them to go down to the Wolf’s Head for an after-work brew, but after a single drink at the saloon with their new acquaintances, they are both barely able to hide how much pain their unaccustomed bodies are in from the hard day’s work anymore.

Both of them grunt in discomfort on the way up the sloping mountainside as they head towards ‘home’, their muscles stiff and aching by the time they awkwardly slide off their horses at their previous campsite.

“Gonna take a bit to get used to this” Mickey pants, lifting his hands to show them to Ian, whose ginger brows furrow in concern. He’d wrapped his handkerchief around his hands to keep them protected and padded from the near constant pressure of the axe handle rubbing against them, but Mickey’s poor palms are split and almost bleeding with broken blisters.

“C’mere” Ian murmurs, beckoning for Mickey to sit down beside him as he puts together a small fire. Half an hour later, after cleaning his own hands with the warm water he prepares, he pats down the cooling poultice he made with plants from his satchel onto his partner’s injured palms, wrapping Mickey’s hands with pieces of relatively clean cloth from his once was handkerchief.

He kisses each covered palm when he’s done, looking up afterwards to see Mickey gazing at him thoughtfully. “Lay down” he says firmly, Ian obliging without comment. Now that he’s taken care of his partner, he’s more than ready to give into his own exhaustion.

He lets out a stiff groan as Mickey carefully climbs over him and straddles his lower back, using his strong bared elbows to massage Ian’s aching shoulders and upper back, working on each knot more gently than would seem possible for such a gruff man.

Ian’s tired, so tired, but all he can think about as he rests his head against the sweet-smelling grass with the comforting weight of Mickey on his back, and his muscles being taken care of, is _this is love_.

_We take care of each other_. _No matter what._

And it does take time for their blisters to harden and heal, and before that happens, more form on top of the old ones, making intimate moments gentler for a while. And it does takes time for their bodies to get used to what’s now expected of them almost every day, but it does happen, and it makes physical things between them even more amazing than they were before. It happens and so do other things.

Ian and Mickey begin to thrive on the productivity of their long work days, knowing each one brings them a little closer to what they ultimately want together, just like their journey to Oregon did.

Sometimes, each man working one end of a gigantic- toothed saw as they split apart a massive tree in tandem, they’ll pause and look up at each other, sweat dripping from their dirty brows, and one of them will tiredly mouth “I love you”, always getting a sincere return from the other.

They plan carefully with the mostly stolen money they arrived in Oregon with to make it last. Three days a week they go after work with some of the other men from the processing site to get drinks together at the Wolf’s Head, and sometimes Kev even slips them an extra one for free. He’s taken a liking to them. The rest goes towards the supplies they need, food… some new clothes, but mostly they save it.

Save it for the home they have both been waiting their whole lives for.

_A Few Weeks Later…_

Mickey stands comfortably, gazing out over the ancient looking mountains laid out before him as he thinks, the fresh and slightly cool air this high up making his rather abused lungs feel like he has never smoked a damn day in his life, even though he had happily finished one just moments before.

God damn its beautiful up here, even he can easily admit that. More beautiful than anything he had ever known.

And for more reasons than one, as he places one boot on a small boulder in front of himself and follows a bird’s flight path in the far distance with his sharp blue eyes, taking another deep breath at the same time, up here he feels like he owns the world.

-

Ian wakes up from his brief post-coital snooze, gently shoving away the cozy trail blanket from his satisfied body. Mickey never left him uncovered while he slept, always saying when he woke up and questioned it that he’d catch a damn cold. But that concern makes him smile now, because as he looks ahead of himself towards the edge of the piece of mountain they had claimed as their own, he sees Mickey, bare as he had been while they made love just a half hour before, standing there and looking out peacefully over the open landscape.

Times like these, while admiring his naked form from behind, all Ian can do is look up to the sky and thank whatever allowed this to happen. He’s always been told otherwise, but sometimes it sure does seem that God had something to do with it. The way the sun plays across Mickey’s pale skin in the same way it plays across the treetops, makes him appear golden around the edges… Ian’s heart beats faster in his chest just looking at him.

 “Mickey” he eventually calls out, his voice thick, and the bounty hunter turns to look at him, still glowing.

“C’mere cowboy” he says, gesturing him over with his hand. As naked and as comfortable as his partner is, Ian walks slowly and carefully across the soft grass and tiny wildflowers, happily joining him at the viewpoint he had chosen.

“There” Mickey immediately says, pointing downwards at a flat stretch of land, “Right there. That’s where I want to build our home, Ian”.

“We can start?” Ian asks, his previously calm heart now fluttering up with excitement. He had wanted to get going on it as soon as they had arrived…. but with their busy schedules and what not, and lack of funds for supplies, it had seemed he would just have to wait to build their home together.

“We can start planning” Mickey says warmly, reaching over to put a strong hand on his shoulder, “C’mon. Let’s get dressed. We got a lot to do”.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Interesting note, cowboy coffee clearly didn't have a filter so coffee would be pretty gritty on the trail :P
> 
> One more little wrap up chapter coming after this! I will try and write/post soon (same with my other fic) but my schedule is bad for the next week or so, so please bear with me :)


	17. Our Beginning

**_Two Months Later,_ **

**Mt. Hood, Oregon**

****

Ian Clayton Gallagher is starting to become mighty convinced that heaven is a place on this untamed and wild earth, right here on the isolated and scenic mountain top he lives on in fact, where time often seems to stand tranquil and still, and each day is more fruitful and promising than the last.

If only there were ample opportunity for pondering such wonderful things at this moment, but he has something much more important, breathtaking even, to focus on.  

Combing his long fingers through Mickey’s dark and unruly hair, he hears an appreciative and low sort of rumble rise from deep in the bounty hunter’s throat in response, his full mouth and lips rather unavailable to make any sort of comment.

Ian has been more than ready to go for a while now, after lovingly urging Mickey to slow his pace so he doesn’t prematurely finish into his warm, drawing mouth. “Oh… oh, God dammit Mickey, don’t” he groans, feeling pressure from his partner’s strong tongue on the underside of his shaft.

He forces his green eyes open and upwards towards the endless blue sky again, making his currently overwhelmed senses focus on something other than the incredible, mind-blowing touch, like the unclouded sunlight, and the pure sounds of nature surrounding them, but his hips are twitching instinctually anyways, urging him to start moving towards a release.

His heart is pounding like a determined blacksmith’s hammer by the time Mickey finally ceases pushing him over the edge, instead moving his gifted lips to slowly kiss upwards along his heaving chest.

Each kiss is slightly wet, but still hot against his sensitive skin, making his stomach pull inwards on itself as he tries to control himself from just grabbing Mickey and flinging him down so he can mount him faster, like an aggressive animal in heat.

Often times that’s just well and fine, but some days Mickey wants to take things slower. Today was apparently one of those days.

By the time Mickey reaches his open and waiting mouth, Ian’s hands are pulling impatiently at his partner’s beige cotton shirt, yanking his suspenders out of the way, and exposing his chest so he can run his searching hands around his back to pull him in even closer against his body.

“Someone’s frisky today” Mickey murmurs seductively by his ear, licking a line across his neck once he’s done. Ian grits his teeth, _fuck it feels incredible._ He’s practically got the shakes.

“I’m achin to be inside you Mick” he breathes, grinding his hips upwards to show him how ready he is. “I know you are cowboy” Mickey grins back lustily, his dark eyebrows lifted and almost mildly teasing, “Have half a mind to just let you get right to it…but maybe you should get me ready first”.

Ian nods his strong and faithful agreement as Mickey reaches for his sweaty hand and places it beneath himself, closing his eyes trustfully and biting his bottom lip as Ian’s fingers stretch upwards to bury themselves inside him first.

Listening for when his partner’s grunts of intruding turn into more relaxed grunts of pleasure, Ian’s one free hand scrambles for the container they’d brought up with them. “Get that oil we got in town” he immediately says when he can’t find it, Mickey’s eyes flying open as he leans over to grab it himself.

His pupils are large and dark now, blue eyes needy and full, and he unscrews the cap impatiently, slicking his tattooed fingers with the warm oil before he slides some of it down over Ian’s stiffness.

They’d heard of the product from the men back in the Wolf’s Head, who apparently bought it to use with either their wives or the whores who made their rounds at the saloon, pocketing change from most of them men in town. The first night they had used it, they fucked three times in a row before they finally passed out from exhaustion, only to wake up and go at it again.

Ian sucks in his breath as Mickey’s strong hand glides just once down his thick length, squeezing it firmly as he lathers more oil over it. Without either of them saying a word, Ian hasn’t gotten off his back or even tried to, and he’s not the least bit surprised when Mickey mounts himself over him, carefully lowering himself down over his erection.

“Fuck” they both breathe out in desperate unison as soon as he’s fully seated, closing their eyes in almost painful pleasure before they open them to look at each other again, gazes locked and heated.

“C’mere” Ian murmurs as the bounty hunter starts to push up and down against his cock, enveloping him in a tight, slick heat that’s better than anything he’s every known. He wraps his arms around Mickey’s smooth and muscular back, the two of them rocking into each other in unison while their lips and tongues collide feverishly.

It doesn’t take long before a few sharp cries later, Mickey’s spilling down thick white stripes onto his stomach, his own long pent-up release following just seconds later.

His man’s knees are almost shaking as he slowly gets up from their place in the grass after a few minutes of much-needed rest, shaking his head in wonder while Ian regains his breath.

Even though Mickey had done most of the hard labour, his intense orgasm hit him like a train, and it takes a moment for him to clear his head. He blinks up at Mickey standing over him, who’s slowly pulling his clothes back on.

“What’re you doing?” he questions as Mickey tosses his trousers at him too.

“C’mon, I want to show you something”.

-

They trek down the gently sloping mountainside together for about twenty minutes, but it only takes Ian half that time to realize Mickey’s taking them to their future home site, though he doesn’t quite understand why at first.

He can’t actually _see_ it until they are all the way there, standing across the mostly flat stretch of land and taking in the deeply dug out lines where plain and untampered meadow grass used to be.

“What is this?” he asks curiously, walking around and looking at the various rectangular shapes carved meticulously into the land. Mickey nods at his question and quickly licks his bottom lip before he waves his hand wordlessly for Ian to follow him, stopping at one particular point on the line of the largest space he had drawn.

He points downwards, clearing his throat before he speaks, but Ian is already starting to understand, a joyful warmth coming over him. “This right here? This is where I’m going to build us a front door. And this we’re gonna walk in the day this house is finished, ready to spend the rest of our lives together”.

_The rest of our lives._

Mickey then steps over the line, guiding Ian over towards the first left corner of the large rectangle, “And over here? This is where I’m gonna cook for you, when we’re not cooking together”.

Ian smiles, closing his eyes for a moment, “I like the sound of that. Cooking together”. He’s picturing a warm and cozy fireplace and a metal pot simmering in the hearth, filling the entire room with delicious cooking smells. He’ll dip a ladle into the pot, give the meal taste, hold it out for Mickey to taste too until they can agree that it’s perfect.

“Yeah” Mickey agrees softly, imagining of his own of their future. He walks a several paces across the green grass, approaching the farthest barrier he had drawn, before he stops. Ian follows him over, watches him as he stares down at it for a moment. He already knows, but he asks anyways.

“What goes here?”

Mickey looks up at him, smiles. “This is where we’re gonna go to sleep together cowboy, every night, and where we’ll wake up together, every morning”.

There’s something Ian truly can’t wait for. It had been almost a year, and him and Mickey had never spent a single night in a real bed together. He pictures climbing in between soft and warm blankets and sheets, curling up against Mickey’s warm and solid body to sleep.

Mickey points again across the space, “And we’ll have some chairs, and a big table over there. We can make em ourselves from the extra lumber we get, learn how to carve maybe. Other than that, I guess we’ll see what we need when the time comes”.

“When…when did you do all this?” Ian asks, trying to imagine how he could have done it without him knowing.

Mickey doesn’t even look over as he answers, “I got up early every morning the past week while you were asleep, came and woke you up in time for work”. Ian glances around the space again. One day he’ll be inside four walls standing in this very spot.

Regardless, he’s already home.

“I don’t think we’ll need anything else Mick. We got each other”.

“Mmm” Mickey hums appreciatively, tilting his head to accept the loving kiss Ian plants slowly on his neck. The other man’s touch still drives him wild. “God I can’t wait for this” Ian breathes against his skin, his voice almost shaking, “I’ve been waiting my whole life for it”.

Mickey nods, kissing Ian’s forehead, pushing the red hair out of the way so he can. “I know”. Ian pulls away from his strong shoulder, green eyes shining as he looks out over the land at the other rectangles dug out farther away, “What about those?”

Mickey glances over at them, tipping his head as the late afternoon sun meets his eyes and blinds him a little, “The little one will be our outhouse. No more shittin in the bushes. I thought we could get some animals for the rest. A barn, some pens maybe. I thought you should have a cow or two to boss around, cowboy, just to keep you happy”.

Now Ian really laughs, his happiness bubbling over, “But I have you to boss around” he insists.

“Yeah. You do” Mickey agrees, “But who knows, maybe some day when we can’t do logging anymore, we could do that little farm you mentioned last month. It’s not a bad idea. Some pigs, couple chickens, enough to keep us going. Then we don’t have to work for fucking nobody but ourselves”.

Ian nods, picturing the structures that will be going up over the next couple of months.

The hard work, the sweat, maybe even the blood that will go into it as they work through all their free time.

And God… he can’t wait for it.

-

 _Dearest Family,_  
  
_I am sorry that I have not written sooner, but the past eight months have been ones filled with travel, adventure, and falling in love... and I've truly been caught up in the wonder of it all._

_Mick and I are finally happily settled in Oregon now, and after a few months of working hard for the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, we are working on building a homestead during our time off from the ground up for ourselves to live together, far from any others to afford us the privacy we need. Until it's finished, we will continue to sleep underneath the stars every night, and they truly seem infinite out here._

_We are making good money working for this logging company in Mt. Hood, Lip, you were definitely right about its growing success, but should that ever fail, we have thought about starting a small farm together, with the essentials to keep us going._

_Mickey often jokes that I’m still a cowboy at heart, and that I probably need some cattle to herd to be kept content, but I don’t think that’s true._

_I still miss you very much, and think of you all often, but I want you all to know how happy I am out here. I always imagined having to live a life marked by personal loneliness, but I have never felt more whole than I do now._

_It's almost funny… I thought my life was over the day I was marked as a wanted man, but really, it was just beginning._  
  
_Love always, your brother,_  
  
_Ian C. Gallagher_

“Here” Ian says, folding his handwritten letter and handing it to Mickey, who’s drinking a gritty cowboy coffee out of a tin cup beside him as they both sit by a rather small fire later that same day and relax, “I feel bad for not writing sooner”.

“I’m sure they’ll understand” Mickey answers, “Not like we’ve been sittin on our asses and picking daises for the past eight months”.

Fuck, it had been anything but, especially since they actually arrived in Oregon. Mickey’s not sure he’s ever worked so hard in his goddamn life.

Ian starts to nod as he gets up, but then he brushes off his trousers, pausing with a slightly hesitant look on his face. “I thought I’d be sad…leaving them, you know? I am sometimes I guess. But mostly… I feel happier than I’ve ever been. And it’s because I’m with you. I just wanted you to know that”.

Getting up from his place in the dirt, Mickey reaches over to hold the side of Ian’s face, his man’s red stubble feeling rough against his slightly calloused hand while they kiss, wordlessly exchanging their love for each other.

“I’m going to go feed Diablo and Shiloh” Ian tells him when they separate, grabbing for his Stetson hat before he goes to fetch the feed sack their horses eat from.

Mickey watches him leave, and then pulls out a stiff piece of paper himself, taking the pencil Ian had left. He uses his knife to sharpen it, and then writes, thinking of his own family. The one person who would always mean that word to him, besides Ian.

 

 _Mandy,_  
  
_Ian and I made it safely to Oregon a few months back, which I'm sure you partly already knew, since our asses were never dragged back to Kansas in cuffs. Sure that news would have reached you even in Tombstone._

_I gotta say, it was kind of strange being the hunted instead of the fucking hunter, but now that it's all over, I don't even miss the chase to be honest. I think I found what I was always looking for when I nabbed that cowboy back in El Paso._

_Remember that night I showed up with Ian, and we went outside to talk alone, and you asked me if I was falling for him, going soft, and I gave you hell just for suggesting it?_

_Well, I think it probably all started from the first time he turned around to look me in the eyes after taking a piss, with his hands in the air, and his bright red hair all mussed up while I pointed a gun at him._

Mickey pauses, hearing Ian’s voice cutting through the near silence in the mountains, he turns in the direction of it and grins. Ian, naked as the day he was born, is waving towards him.

“The creek is warm as hell today Mick! Get your ass down here!”

Mickey nods his head as he shouts back, “Just gimme me a minute Gallagher!”

He turns back to his piece of paper, scrawling just a little more before he stuffs it into an envelope.

 

_Anyways, Ian's hollering for me now to go swim in the creek with him, so I'll end here. I hope you're taking care of yourself, and remember if you ever need anything that your dumb husband back in Texas can't provide, just write._

_-Your brother, Mick_

_Also, don’t forget to repost Ian’s letter in this envelope to his family._

_…Love you_

As he comes striding through the trees that hide their little creek, he finds Ian’s clothes in a rumpled pile at the base of a tree and their two horses drinking further down in the water. He smiles, seeing Ian wading deeper into the creek in the opposite direction and letting out little whooshes of air as it presumably gets colder _._

“Not quite like the fuckin hot springs is it?” Mickey calls out, Ian immediately turning around to look at him at the sound of his voice.

“Why aren’t you naked yet?” he shoots back, his voice lowering to a drawl as he leans back and keeps even strokes, now almost floating in the quiet current.

“Good question” Mickey replies, reaching down to yank his boots off. He strips right down to nothing, tossing his forgotten clothes onto Ian’s already hastily made pile, and steps into the creek gingerly, letting his skin gradually get used to the refreshing temperature.

“You’re gonna need to come a little closer cowboy” he chides, noticing how deep the creek is where Ian is swimming, “Can’t get to ya all the way over there”.

Ian splashes some water towards him, his smooth chest glistening and wet as he lifts upwards slightly in the water. “Maybe you’ll have to catch me. I am a wanted man after all” he practically sings, tipping his head towards him.

The ex bounty hunter shakes his head as he swims towards him, gritting his teeth until the cool water begins to feel more normal against his skin, and then he relaxes as he reaches Ian.

 “Nah, we’re free men now Ian. But I’m always gonna want you”.

Hands reaching for each other, they both pull each other close, meeting chest to chest in the middle of the creek while the cool and refreshing water continues to roll along past their joined forms.

Ian holds the side of his wet cheek with one hand firmly, his lashes holding wet flecks of water from the creek as he looks into Mickey’s eyes, both of them anchored by each other even as the creek tries to push them along.  

“Mickey, I’m gonna love you for the rest of my goddamn life”.

Leaning in to seal their kiss, Mickey’s words barely manage to make their way out before their lips take over for their overwhelming feelings.

“I know cowboy. I know”.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And they lived happily, ever, after.  
> Thank you so much to everyone who made the journey with the boys, you're all someone to ride the river with <3


End file.
